TO GRIEF, LAWMAKERS ADD FRUSTRATION

By David McGrath Schwartz

Sunday, Dec. 9, 2007 | 2:21 a.m.

Kelly Thomas-Boyers lost a son and found a cause - a poor replacement by any measure.

Her son died as the result of a vehicle crash, not wearing a seat belt. There should be a stronger law to require their use, she said.

And soon enough she found herself navigating the state's political arena, a strange foreign land to the average citizen.

Take this, for example: After a bill to toughen seat belt enforcement failed in this year's Legislature, Thomas-Boyers wondered how each legislator stood on the issue. After six months of calling, e-mailing, faxing and sending letters to all 63 lawmakers, she has reached only eight of them.

The poor showing hurt even more because her son, 21-year-old Adam Thomas, was an intern for a legislator during the last session. He believed in politics, and the Legislature.

"How can I not make an impact when my son loved this process?" she asked, standing over a framed state flag presented at her son's funeral.

"I'm looking for the handbook on how to work with the Legislature," she said. "It's not there."

On a Friday night in March, Adam, a UNR student, was traveling with a friend in his SUV. Something darted in front of the vehicle, police say. It swerved and rolled over. The friend, wearing a seat belt, survived. Adam, after eight days in a coma, died.

At the time, Sen. Dennis Nolan, R-Las Vegas, had been pushing legislation to allow police to pull vehicles over if the occupants aren't wearing seat belts. Under the current law, police can issue tickets for that only if there is another legal reason to stop the vehicle.

Police told Thomas-Boyers that if Adam had been wearing his seat belt, he would have lived. Thomas-Boyers became convinced that if Adam knew he could get pulled over for not wearing the seat belt, he would have buckled up.

Nolan wanted Thomas-Boyers to testify for his bill, to put a human face on the importance of seat belts. She would join law enforcement officials, insurance lobbyists and others.

When the day came, the others talked mostly about statistics. Thomas-Boyers talked about her boy.

The bill barely made it out of the senate on an 11-10 vote. There were concerns about civil liberties and racial profiling.

The bill was sent to the Assembly Transportation Committee, chaired by Kelvin Atkinson, D-Las Vegas.

On the day of the hearing, Thomas-Boyers sent Atkinson 21 balloons. Here are 21 reasons to vote for the law, one for each year of my son's life, she wrote in a note to him.

It made Atkinson uncomfortable. Public policy should be set based on facts, he said.

"It had become too emotional," Atkinson said in a recent interview.

A dozen legislators told Atkinson they opposed the proposed law. He wouldn't name them.

"I'm not going to throw people under the bus," he said.

Atkinson said he sympathized with Thomas-Boyers. Still, the information on seat belt safety that he requested didn't arrive until the day of the hearing.

The bill never got to an assembly floor vote.

Thomas-Boyers doesn't regret the balloons.

"I thought they were a discreet way of reminding him this was someone who was just 21 years old," she said. "If he expected me not to do something, not be vocally supportive, he's not realistic."

The bill's death only emboldened Thomas-Boyers, and she armed herself with more arguments: Nevada would qualify for more than $5 million in a federal grant. Police chiefs elsewhere have said seat belt laws don't increase racial profiling. We live in a 24-hour drinking town. Why not make us a little safer?

She has now set her sights on making seat belts an issue in 2009, when the Legislature next meets.

First order of business: get her hands on the legislative phone book.

And here's where she learned about one of the aspects of living in a state with part-time lawmakers with no staffs. It's all but impossible to get hold of most of them when they're not in session.

Some of the politicians list their work numbers, home numbers or cell phone numbers. More list numbers that seem to go only to an answering machine.

Thomas-Boyers started calling. She knew Nolan from the legislative session, and Sen. Mike Schneider, D-Las Vegas, for whom Adam had served as an intern. She has also been an acquaintance of Assemblyman Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas.

She met with Atkinson but said he wouldn't give specific reasons for killing the bill. She left still uncertain what evidence he would need to see to change his mind.

Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, returned her call and met with her. Sen. Valerie Wiener, D-Las Vegas, called her back. So did Assemblywoman RoseMary Womack, D-Henderson. After repeated calls, she eventually got her own assemblyman, Democrat Harvey Munford, on the phone. She said he was noncommittal about a seat belt law.

Those she did talk to said she needed to pin down key members of the Legislature, including Assembly leaders and black members, who worried about the racial profiling aspects.

None of them has called her back.

Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley, the top-ranking legislative Democrat, said she believed someone in her office got back to Thomas-Boyers. (Thomas-Boyers says no one did.)

"Of course we listen to citizens and constituents," Buckley said. "It's very difficult for most legislators, who work full-time jobs, work on numerous committees, to respond to the hundreds of phone calls, hundreds of e-mails they receive every week."

Buckley said she didn't think the law was necessary, because she didn't believe it would encourage those who don't wear seat belts to buckle up.

"Not wearing a seat belt is already against the law," she points out.

Thomas-Boyers has put in calls and sent e-mails, faxes and letters to the other lawmakers. "It can be a full-time job," said Thomas-Boyers, who has a full-time job. "You sit there and just keep dialing.

Nevada's is supposed to be a citizen legislature, of regular, approachable people serving the state for a few weeks every two years. But given her experience, Thomas-Boyers questions that premise. They're clearly not very accessible and, to her, not very effective. Maybe it's time for a full-time Legislature, she says.

"When they're part-time, it's hard to hold people accountable," she says.

Lobbyists and others who deal with the Legislature say they weren't surprised that Thomas-Boyers couldn't get traction with lawmakers.

"She's in the game," said one person familiar with dealings in Carson City who, for fear of alienating legislators, asked for anonymity. "She needs to make them know that this isn't going away."

Another suggested she hire a lobbyist. Thomas-Boyers dismissed that on principle.

"I don't know the game of politics, but I have a passion that the average person can make a difference," she said. "If I can get 200 people, 400 people to support this, they'll have to listen. That was what my son was all about."

Lisa Mayo-DeRiso, a longtime government affairs consultant and activist on local and state issues, said the lack of response from legislators was outrageous, but not unusual.

"Her experience is very typical of trying to get the attention of our government officials," Mayo-DeRiso said.

Her advice: Thomas-Boyers needs to make this a campaign issue. When up for reelection, legislators are responsive. During off years, they are not. Politicians may not care about seat belts, but they will care about them if they think votes hang in the balance.

Thomas-Boyers is learning that lesson. Having gotten the off-election-year cold shoulder from legislators, she started to doubt herself. Maybe no one shared her passion about seat belts.

But when she organized a seat belt rally last month at the University Medical Center Trauma Center, 210 people signed a petition supporting the tougher seat belt law.

She and two other groups held a golf tournament on Nov. 5, raising $20,000 for their causes.

She has reached out to casino companies and restaurants, to get valet workers to encourage patrons to buckle up. She has been received well, she said, by "companies that want to see their patrons come back safely."

She has created a scholarship fund in her son's name. It was just fully endowed, and the first year's $500 scholarship will go to a UNR student who is a legislative intern.

There will be another walk in honor of Adam in March, on the anniversary of his death.

She has remained in contact with safety advocates, law enforcement agencies and others who have worked to get a tougher seat belt law passed in Nevada for years.

At her house near the heart of Las Vegas, there's a shelf with pictures of Adam and her other son, Alec, who's 17.

Thanksgiving was hard. The upcoming holidays, she worries, will be harder.

And she obsesses on seat belts, scouring the newspaper for stories about car crashes even as they trigger tearful memories of her son's death. She knows the names of people who have died while not wearing seat belts, and details of the crashes. She has held off contacting their families. Everyone needs time to grieve, she knows.

She'll continue to fight, to lobby, to invite legislators to her walks and golf tournaments and memorials.

So far, none has attended.

But they haven't started campaigning yet, and maybe then they'll pay attention.