Lobby Day Membership Ask – Show Up

by Steve Panten

I hope that everyone had a great holiday season and enjoyed some valuable time with family and friends. Time to hit the ground for 2024 so here is the bad news. As I am writing this in the middle of December, we are at 103 motorcycle fatalities in the State. That’s a 28.8% increase over last year! The other important stat we have is that 20% of the people killed were wearing helmets. We need to have hard discussions about how we are going to reduce fatalities. The State Department of Transportation is going to look at these numbers and are going to have to find solutions.

The good thing is that we are at the table when these discussions happen. Much of this is due to John Reblin being the Chair of the Motorcycle Safety Advisory Committee (MoSAC) for the State Department of Transportation (DOT). This gives us input on how best to approach this, but something must happen. Once the year ends and we have a breakdown of who is crashing, when, how, and why, we can develop a workable plan. I understand that the DOT is working on a campaign to try to get more experienced riders to take a refresher course to improve their skills. This is a great start, and I am hopeful that the message reaches the audience.

Feb 22nd is our Lobby Day in Madison. We are working on finalizing the buses and the Legislative Committee started to organize what our agenda is going to look like. The interesting thing is our message is going to be protecting an individual’s rights. The right to own a combustion engine vehicle, the right to have access to the only fuel that we can legally use in that vehicle, and the right to an individual’s privacy.

Here is our opportunity to thank our elected representatives that voted to support our Protection of Combustion Engines Bill and to ask those that opposed it why they voted that way. What we are hoping to learn from those opposed is how we can change the language to satisfy them while still protecting a consumer’s choice. We need to remember that while they did not support this one issue, we will need to work with them so they will support our next issue, so I am hoping that our presenters can have a good discussion with them to find a solution.

Our issue of protecting E10 or less is going to be more focused around education than a hard ask from our legislators. With Representative Novak and Senator Ballweg introducing legislation that would require all new gas stations to sell all E15 or greater products for the first 5 years means they do not understand how important protecting E10 or less is. Lobby Day 2024 is our chance! We can bring in the information from the EPA stating that it is illegal to use anything greater than E10 in a motorcycle. We can also bring in information from small engine manufacturers stating that using E15 will void the warranty. This is all very important as they try to push for Wisconsin to switch to E20 (yes, I heard that from an elected official so it’s coming).

I know many people have a hard time believing that the future may include an end-of-life directive, but it’s not that far off. That means that when you want to sell your combustion engine vehicle or equipment, you would have to “sell” it to the government. We have been watching government introduce legislation that is slowly closing the door on motorcycling as we know it. It won’t be an all of sudden moment, it will be done slowly, and people won’t even realize it’s happening until it’s too late. We need to stay on top of this and continue our fight through vigilance.

Our last agenda item is protecting an individual’s privacy by defining who owns the information in your vehicles data collection devices. This is a complicated issue as the Federal Government has laws that partially protect the information, and many other states have their own language. We are still hoping to get a Senator and an Assembly member to just do a rewrite of our 2017 bill, but with the legislature adjourning in late winter/early spring, we are looking to have this ready in 2025.

Some exciting news is that the House of Representatives passed H.R. 4468, the Choice in Automobile Retail Sales Act (CARS Act). This piece of legislation follows the passage of H.R. 1435, the Preserving Choice in Vehicle Purchases Act. Both pieces of legislation were drafted to protect what we tried to accomplish here in Wisconsin with our two bills. Now we know that just because it passes the House of Representatives it does not make it law, it would still need to pass the senate and President Biden would have to sign it, but it is a great message to government that the nation is starting to push back on overregulation. Protecting a consumer’s choice on what type of fuel source they feel is necessary for their needs, and budget, based on their own research is a right of residency in this nation that needs to be protected.

ABATE of Wisconsin’s Lobby Day is the most important day of the year for motorcyclists in the State of Wisconsin. We would like to thank the members of the AMA District 16 for recognizing that and helping us offset the cost with a donation of $1,000. The AMA has joined us in Madison to testify in support of bills to protect combustion engines and E10 or less. They recognize the hard work that is involved in trying to get something like this passed and we appreciate the support.

One final thing – ABATE of South Dakota will be hosting the 34th Annual Heartland STEAM conference in Sioux Falls on April 12-13, 2024. This is a great conference to learn from the leaders in the 6 surrounding states. Learn from the best on what they are working on, how they are successful, and how we can be a better motorcycle rights organization. We have a few scholarships available to help cover the expenses for this conference if you are interested. Please reach out to me at legis@abatewis.org if you are interested in attending. You will be put on a list of possible scholarships. We have not seen the agenda yet to see who will be presenting and who needs to be there, but we are always looking for new people to attend.

Plan on being in Madison on February 22nd to help us get our message across. As usual, we will have people there to help you find where to go and we will have people very knowledgeable on our topics to do the speaking at the meeting with your legislators. In order to be successful, we need to show up, and the more that show up, the stronger the voice.

That’s it.

Steve