Brown Slams the Brakes on Seat Belt Bill

In a surprise move, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown on Thursday put the brakes on his own mandatory seat belt bill, which had seemed assured of passing the Legislature and being signed by Gov. George Deukmejian.

The San Francisco Democrat asked the Assembly to vote down the bill in its present form because Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole had refused to rule on whether the legislation would be used in efforts to scuttle implementation of a federal air bag requirement.

By rejecting the Senate-amended bill on a 3-71 vote, the Assembly automatically sent the measure to a conference committee and an uncertain fate.

Dashed Expectations

Brown’s action crushed expectations that the bill, which needed only a final Assembly vote on the Senate amendments, would be routinely passed and sent to Deukmejian, who had said he would sign it.

But Brown told reporters after the vote that he did not want to move ahead because he feared that the bill requiring Californians to buckle up or face a $20 fine would jeopardize a nationwide requirement that air bags or other passive restraints be installed in all passenger cars by 1990.

The Reagan Administration has said it would drop the requirement that manufacturers equip cars with air bags or other crash protection systems if states representing at least two-thirds of the population enact mandatory seat belt laws by April 1, 1989.

But Brown, along with several major auto insurance companies backing his bill, has insisted that any California seat belt law not be used as justification to drop the federal air bag requirements.

So the bill was carefully drafted to avoid meeting federal criteria for mandatory seat belt laws.

Among other things, the federal criteria call for fines of at least $25 for those who do not buckle up and for statewide education programs to promote use of seat belts.

The Brown bill does not provide for a statewide education program, and it limits fines for first offenses to $20--omissions that the Speaker says should prevent federal transportation officials from counting California among the states with suitable mandatory seat belt laws.

But in an Aug. 5 letter to Brown, Dole declined to say whether the proposed California statute would be counted, in part because the federal air bag rules have been challenged in U.S. Court of Appeals.

Ruling Would Be ‘Premature’

“I believe ruling on particular state statutes would be premature,” said Dole, repeating a position she has announced publicly on several occasions.

Her response should not have taken Brown by surprise. In an interview earlier this year, Brown told The Times that he knew that he could expect no assurances from the federal government on the impact of his bill.

Nevertheless, after Thursday’s Assembly action, he told reporters: “I’m going to await a more positive response from Ms. Dole that California would not be counted . . . for the purposes of wiping out the opportunity for any other form of (mandatory passenger safety) restraints.”

In earlier interviews, Brown also pointed to a provision in his bill imposing criminal penalties on manufacturers who fail to equip cars with automatic crash protections by Sept. 1, 1989. The Assembly leader argued that the California penalties would probably result in the installation of air bags or automatic seat belts in all passenger cars nationwide because of the huge size of the California market.

Less Optimistic

On Thursday, he appeared less optimistic and argued that it was essential to get the federal air bag question settled “because I’m concerned with lives everywhere.”

Brown left open the possibility that the conference committee, made up of three members of the Senate and three from the Assembly, could come up with an alternative solution, even if Dole refuses to give him the clear answer he wants.

He said, “I’m not prepared to tell you what I’m prepared to do because I don’t know.”

Brown’s action came as a surprise to legislators, several of whom said they had no advance warning.

Foran Surprised

Among those was Sen. John F. Foran (D-San Francisco), who as Senate Transportation Committee chairman had worked closely with Brown in reaching a compromise that appeared to assure passage of the bill.

Foran, the bill’s co-author, insisted that Brown drop a clause that would have ended the mandatory seat belt requirement in the state if the federal government dropped its air bag rules.

Loren Smith, a lobbyist representing a coalition of auto makers and car dealers, said that his group had “picked up a rumor about two weeks ago that the Speaker would move to put the bill into conference.”

The coalition, which opposes federal air bag requirements, reluctantly supported the measure, “as the best seat belt bill attainable,” Smith said.

Smith charged that several of the largest auto insurers in the country want to kill the measure because they want to be sure that the federal air bag requirement goes into effect.