One of the bills passed by the Legislature last session increased the fine for driving too slowly.

As passed, the bill reads: "A person operating a motor vehicle at any time on a two-lane roadway outside of an urban area shall pull the motor vehicle off the roadway at the first opportunity to pull over safely if there are five or more motor vehicles immediately following that motor vehicle. A person operating a motor vehicle who violates this subsection is guilty of an infraction as described in AS 28.40.050(d) and shall be punished by a fine of at least $100."

Gov. Tony Knowles signed the bill, and now traffic on the state's highways is clipping along like never before, right?

Fat chance.

In the week I spent driving on the Seward and Sterling highways, I put in as much time dawdling as I had before the passage of Senate Bill 222. In one particularly long caravan, led by an RV the size of an Iowa class battleship, I had enough time to wash and wax my car. And we were going so slowly that I could have done it without breaking into a trot.

I mean, the guy was actually traveling under the speed limit. No Alaskan wants to drive under the speed limit. Most of us want to cruise along well over the speed limit, so fast that our wheels barely touch the ground. Hey, it's a big state, and we want to save time, valuable time that could be spent standing shoulder to shoulder with other Alaskans and whipping the water into a froth with our fishing lines.

Instead, we get stuck behind some geezer who can barely see over the steering wheel of his big rig and is traveling at a steady 53 mph. So upping the fine from $30 to $100 and slapping up more warning sings seems like a good idea. Until you look into the situation a little more closely.

Senate Bill 222 was sponsored by Dave Donley. He's the guy who usually spends his time writing constitutional amendments that get thrown out because they are unconstitutional, and bills to reduce state prisoners' porridge ration. His original bill would have increased the fine to $200, but was lowered when someone pointed out that would make the fine for driving too slowly more than many fines for driving too fast.

Now, if you think that politics is just show business for ugly people, that's all Donley had to do. Sponsor a get-tough bill, see it passed, call it an accomplishment and slap it on a campaign brochure.

But if the political system is actually supposed to solve problems, there's another step to this process. Enforcement. If you want drivers to stop moseying, you need people out enforcing the law. On the highways of Alaska, the enforcement agency is the state troopers.

Now, I understand that the troopers have other things to do besides keeping traffic moving. But on my tour of the Peninsula, I did not see one of them writing a ticket to a slow driver. In fact, I did not see one of them doing anything. Period.

One reason might be that the operating budget passed by the very same Legislature that passed SB 222 means that there will be three fewer troopers on the payroll.

And who was in charge of that operating budget in the Senate?

Why, none other than Dave Donley.

So he gets credit for a get-tough bill and for holding the line on spending.

And the fact that one tends to cancel out the other? Well, I guess he just hopes nobody reaches that conclusion very fast. At least before the next election.

Mike Doogan's opinion column appears each Tuesday, Friday and Sunday. His telephone number is 907 257-4350, and his e-mail address is mdoogan@adn.com.