A somewhat diminished DUI felony bill (HB-1043), sponsored by Lori Saine, R-Weld, and Beth McCann, D-Denver, passed unanimously out of the House Finance Committee this week. Colorado is one of only four states where DUIs remain a misdemeanor no matter how many times an offender has been detained. It nearly defies belief, but there are apparently many Colorado drivers with 20 or more DUI arrests. For more than a decade bipartisan sponsors have attempted to impose mandatory prison sentences on these scofflaws.

During his comments supporting the bill, Rep. Dan Pabon, D-Denver, observed that the failure to approve legislation has in some ways converted both the bill itself and the Legislature, by implication, into “repeat offenders”. Previous efforts have repeatedly foundered over the projected costs in a period of tight budgets. The sponsors have amended their proposal since its hearing before the Judiciary Committee, removing the provision requiring a felony charge for the third DUI within seven years and simply imposing a felony charge upon a fourth conviction.

Judges are also provided with expanded authority after a second or third arrest to mandate the installation of inter-lock devices on offenders’ vehicles.

While these changes have cut the estimated costs by more than half, the revised fiscal note still forecasts an annual cost for Corrections of $8 million by the third year of the program. HB-1043 awaits a hearing before the House Appropriations Committee where it must compete against the dozens of bills that have passed out of House committees this session with fiscal notes attached. In recent years, the felony DUI bill has died there in the early morning hours when the Committee clears its calendar in an exercise of fiscal triage.

For the first time in several years, however, significant discretionary dollars are available and the $1.5-2.5 million cost may appear manageable. If the Appropriations Committee were to take public testimony, which it rarely does, they would find it difficult to deny the victims’ families whose stories were recounted before the Finance Committee. The economic damage resulting from the roughly 150 DUI fatalities each year dwarfs the projected costs of the legislation. Ellie Phipps of Grand Junction, who will wear a torso brace for the remainder of her life, was revived three times during surgery, lost her business of 16 years, the jobs of her four employees and has run up a million dollars in medical expenses now relies on Medicaid and other public assistance programs.

Cody Gramsci, whose brother was killed by a repeat drunk driver while returning to his dorm at the University of Colorado after attending a theater show, estimated total economic losses of $3 billion for all 24,000 DUIs each year. He pointed out that the cost of HB-1043 represented just .0003 percent of the 2015-16 budget. It was evident that all of those who testified in support of the bill, including the Martinez and Sanchez families which each experienced multiple deaths including children, took a very dim view of the notion this was an expense that the state could not afford.

Those in support of the bill were backed by testimony from the Colorado District Attorneys Association. The only dissenter was Christy Donner with a criminal reform coalition who pointed out that 71 percent of these fatalities occur in accidents with drivers who have been charged with DUI for the first time. She also claimed that 99 percent of DUI trips go undetected.

Pabon countered by pointing out that the 90/10 rule likely applied, where 10 percent of chronic offenders account for 90 percent of the fatalities. “If we prevent just three of these fatal accidents each year, this legislation will pay for itself,” he asserted.

While the bill passed out of committee unanimously, its survival remains in peril. Several lobbyists presume it will be axed by the Appropriations Committee, thrown in the “…good idea, but not good enough” basket.

Moved by the testimony of victims and their families, Finance Committee members expressed their heartfelt support to the sponsors. Kathleen Conti, R-Arapahoe, Kit Roupe, R-El Paso, and Alec Garnett, D-Denver, stated their appreciation for the public testimony and their commitment to guaranteeing public safety, but perhaps the most eloquent was Daniel Kagan, D-Denver, who pointed out that, “…this isn’t a question of damages, but a question of justice. And sometimes, we have to recognize justice is expensive. We have a moral and ethical obligation here.”

Whether that obligation is large enough to persuade the number crunchers remains to be seen.