A House bill to legalize drag racing in the CNMI needs refinement, according to CNMI Attorney\u2019s General Office.<\/p>\n
House Bill 19-103, which would vest the Department of Public Safety with the duty to establish fees, rules, and regulations for legal drag racing on \u201cprivate and public property, is \u201ctoo broad,\u201d according to CNMI Attorney General Edward Manibusan in a letter to the House Committee on Judiciary and Government Operations.<\/p>\n
Manibusan said the bill gives virtual unbridled discretion to DPS to establish drag racing.<\/p>\n
Without providing defined policy objectives, reasonable restrictions and limits, there is the real possibly that the bill would encourage the haphazard development of drag racing in the CNMI, which may prove harmful to public safety and welfare, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bill should have an outright prohibition against drag racing on any public highway or streets,\u201d Manibusan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere have been horrific traffic accidents involving drag racing on the Commonwealth\u2019s public highways that have claimed precious human lives,\u201d Manibusan added in his Nov. 19 letter.<\/p>\n
Further, the AG said, if drag racing were to be legalized it must be directed to a legal racing area but \u201cnot any public highway or street.\u201d<\/p>\n
In this case, DPS should be the lead agency to provide safe operations based on existing programs like Beat the Heat, Racers Against Street Racing, or the National Hot Rod Association, Manibusan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly with proper and well-defined safety measures and restrictions in place can the Commonwealth benefit from legal drag racing,\u201d the AG states in his letter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A House bill to legalize drag racing in the CNMI needs refinement, according to CNMI…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,35,8430,215],"class_list":["post-215524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-cnmi","tag-dps","tag-general-office","tag-public-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215524\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}