Ohio eyes new blood-alcohol devices

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Ohio plans to spend $6.4 million to give authorities new blood-alcohol devices that are the subject of legal challenges in other states questioning whether the machines are reliably accurate.

The State Controlling Board has approved a request made by the Department of Health and the Department of Public Safety to waive competitive bidding and buy 700 of the devices from Owensboro, Ky.-based CMI Inc.

The company has accumulated more than $2 million in fines in Florida where CMI is being punished each day until it follows a court order to produce the machine's source code so defense attorneys can challenge drunken driving arrests. Thousands of cases have been held up.

Similar litigation is pending in Minnesota. Other states, including Louisiana, Massachusetts and New Jersey, also have sued the company or stopped using its products because of questions of whether the machines are accurate.

CMI President Toby Hall said the Intoxilyzer 8000 is being used in about 10 states and is reliable. He said he has offered states a look at his machine's proprietary information if they abide by his disclosure agreement.

"We do have procedures for obtaining the source code, so the source code is available," Hall said. "We have the procedures in place and they have asked for it in certain other ways. And, yes, they haven't followed through."

Some argue that the machines can be manipulated to deliver several different readings within minutes, all based on how hard or how frequently a person is asked to blow into it. Also, the machines don't permanently record the data.

"The machine just has a greater range of acceptable standards. It's more loosey-goosey, basically," said Ohio State University emeritus professor Alfred E. Staubus, an expert on alcohol-breath machines.

Many of the machines being bought in Ohio will go to the State Highway Patrol, and some will go to local police departments.

"We're able to go in and in one shot use federal funds to replace every single breathalyzer piece of equipment that we have statewide and bring about a uniform machine and uniform standard statewide," said Tom Hunter, spokesman for the Public Safety Department.

Bret Atkins of the health department points out that a drunken driving task force that first convened under former Gov. Bob Taft in 2005 recommended CMI's machine because it was portable and easier for police to use than other stationary devices.

John Fusco, president of National Patent, a Mansfield-based company that manufactures about 90 percent of the breath-test machines in use by police in Ohio, said the new specifications seemed to be drawn to fit CMI's machine.

He wondered why Ohio would broker such a deal with an out-of-state company so wrapped up in litigation.

While the money has been freed up to spend, the Joint Commission on Agency Rule Review still has to write rules into Ohio's administrative code to allow CMI's machines to be used. The commission will schedule a public hearing for December.

------

Information from: The Plain Dealer, http://www.cleveland.com