{"id":946,"date":"2012-09-23T20:42:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-23T20:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2012\/09\/23\/amarillo-assumes-new-role"},"modified":"2012-09-23T20:42:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-23T20:42:00","slug":"amarillo-assumes-new-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=946","title":{"rendered":"Amarillo assumes new role"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>It might be that Amarillo city commissioners\u2019 decision to ban cellphone use while driving is going to start a trend across the state. <\/p>\n<p>Who\u2019da thunk it? Amarillo isn\u2019t known as a municipal trendsetter. That title usually goes to bigger cities with more progressive reputations than little ol\u2019 Amarillo, this outpost on the Caprock. But there might be other cities that follow suit. Could it be Lubbock just down the road, as my pal Enrique Rangel reported today?<\/p>\n<p>State Sen. Kel Seliger, a former Amarillo mayor, calls the city\u2019s decision to enact the ordinance a matter of \u201clocal control,\u201d which he and other legislative Republicans say they favor. But history shows that their passion for local control has its limits, such as whether to allow cities complete autonomy on the issue of red-light cameras. <\/p>\n<p>But the issue of local control is an important matter here. Amarillo city commissioner have acted because they perceive a problem on city streets with motorists operating handheld cellphones while driving their motor vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>Good for them. And good for any city that decides to follow Amarillo\u2019s lead.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It might be that Amarillo city commissioners\u2019 decision to ban cellphone use while driving is going to start a trend across the state. Who\u2019da thunk it? Amarillo isn\u2019t known as a municipal trendsetter. That title usually goes to bigger cities with more progressive reputations than little ol\u2019 Amarillo, this outpost on the Caprock. But there &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=946\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Amarillo assumes new role<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}