The Legislative process can be a very messy thing. Example: Recent legislation to stiffen Wisconsin’s drunk driving laws.

No rational individual would have written several provisions of the bill that was eventually signed by Gov. Jim Doyle. They could only be the product of compromises necessary to split the difference among 99 members of the state Assembly and 33 members of the state Senate, all of whom have their own unique policy preferences.

Consider the bill’s major provisions:

* Make first-time drunken driving a misdemeanor if a child younger than 16 is in the vehicle. How did the safety of a 16-year-old passenger become more important than a 17-year-old passenger? Or a 60-year-old passenger? Why the focus on passengers? Don’t drunk drivers endanger everyone with whom they share the roadway?

* Require ignition locks for all repeat drunk drivers and those with blood-alcohol levels of .15 or greater. So now we have two standards for drunk driving -- drunk and really drunk. So much for the ad campaign that says “buzzed driving is drunk driving.”

* Make a fourth drunk driving offense a felony if it occurs within five years of a previous offense. How did lawmakers come up with that distinction? It’s very likely that someone who got busted for drunk driving in 1998, 2001, 2003 and 2009 still had a significant drinking problem between 2003 and 2009.

* Raise money for enforcement costs by hiking court assessments. That assumes all convicted offenders pay up, a notion that’s divorced from reality. In Outagamie County, for example, roughly half of the assessments charged to people convicted of second, third and fourth drunk driving offenses go unpaid. The vast majority of criminal offenders aren’t money pots; if they were normal, well-adjusted individuals who could support themselves in the mainstream economy, they wouldn’t be jammed up in circuit court.

The bill does contain a positive provision that gives judges the option of reducing jail time for offenders who complete alcohol or drug treatment. Rehabilitation, after all, is considerably cheaper than punishment. But much of the bill consists of silly compromises that fail the test of logic, none of which will make Wisconsin’s roads any safer.