Assembly’s Gantt criticized for blocking texting bill
Avoids meeting mom of West Seneca victim
ALBANY — For years, a single member of the Assembly blocked Buffalo and other communities from being able to install cameras at intersections to catch drivers running red lights.
With that measure recently approved, the legislator, Rochester Democrat David Gantt, now is using his power as chairman of the Transportation Committee to stop another plan with widespread support: banning text messaging while driving.
In a rare scene for Albany, Gantt’s fellow Democrats outed him Tuesday as the obstacle to what they call a common-sense measure after he refused to meet with Kelly Cline, a West Seneca mother whose son died while texting and driving near his home two years ago. Cline was at the Capitol to lobby for the bill’s passage.
“It’s amazing . . . to hear about a chairman who doesn’t meet with people, since I am a chairman and I meet with everybody,” said Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, a Brooklyn Democrat and sponsor of the bill, which has been stalled in Gantt’s committee for several years.
A fuming Assemblyman Mark Schroeder, a Buffalo Democrat who also represents West Seneca, lashed out at Gantt for having his staff meet with Cline.
“If the chairman of the Transportation Committee in the Assembly would meet people who have been affected . . . then maybe that would change [the fact that] in five weeks, my sense is, nothing is going to happen in the Assembly on the texting bill,” he said at an event to push the bill.
Gantt, after a meeting of the committee Tuesday afternoon, declined to comment.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, has long given Gantt veto power over key transportation matters. But Ortiz said Silver is “sensitive” to the text-messaging ban and is trying to get a bill passed before the 2009 session ends next month.
Gov. David A. Paterson has introduced a comprehensive teen driving bill, with provisions such as increasing the number of training hours for a teen to get a license and restricting to one the number of passengers allowed in a car driven by a teen. It also bans all portable electronic devices — hands-free or not — by teen drivers, thereby making text messaging also illegal.
The Paterson bill has been picked up in the Senate but has not yet been introduced in the Assembly.
Sponsors of the text-messaging measure acknowledge that it would be a difficult law for police to enforce. But they said making it illegal would send a message to drivers that could dissuade many from engaging in the distracting practice and possibly encourage more parents to warn teens of the dangers of texting while driving.
In the past two years, at least seven young Western New York drivers have died in car crashes that police say may have been caused by text messaging. The worst incident occurred in June 2007, when five girls, all recent graduates from the same Rochester- area high school, died in a crash in Canandaigua. Last month, Brandie Conklin, a 22- year-old Eden resident, died when the car she was driving crashed into a milk truck; police said she had been texting with her boyfriend, who was traveling behind her in another car.
In December 2007, A. J. Larson rolled through a stop sign at the entrance to his West Seneca home and was killed in a collision.
Tuesday, Cline held up a color photograph of her 20-year-old son as she spoke of the need for state action to ban texting while driving.
“I will miss A. J. for the rest of my life,” said Cline, her other son, Kyle, standing at her side among a half-dozen lawmakers pushing for the bill.
“It takes their eyes off the road. It takes their concentration off the road,” she said.
Earlier, she tried to see Gantt, but Schroeder said she was denied a session with the lawmaker. Staffers said only they would be willing to meet her.
Ortiz, who sponsored the original 2001 ban on cell phone use by drivers without a hands-free device, said the texting ban is backed by consumer groups like AAA and the wireless industry.
Asked if Gantt was the only obstacle to the bill, Ortiz said: “Apparently.”
“I think that’s the biggest trouble now. He’s holding the bill,” Ortiz said.
He added: “It is unacceptable that we still have to fight for common-sense legislation in the New York State Assembly.”
Ortiz said the bill is backed by 92 percent of the members on Gantt’s committee, and he said that, if necessary, an effort could be launched to force the bill onto the committee’s agenda for a vote, “because we’re getting tired of the same song and the same music” from the committee chairman.”
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