Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam is thanking lawmakers for acting quickly in a special legislative session and preventing the loss of some $60 million in federal road money.
The Republican governor hastily called this week’s session after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration warned that the state would lose 8 percent of its federal road funding if a new drunken driving law wasn’t repealed by October 1st. That law ran afoul of federal zero-tolerance standards by raising the maximum allowable blood alcohol content for drivers under the legal drinking age from .02 percent to .08 percent.
Both chambers on Wednesday passed a bill to return the state to the old .02 percent standards for drivers under 21.