A bill to toughen drunken-driver penalities was killed by a House committee today when lawmakers disagreed over how to pay for it and whether to let a new state task force to complete its comprehensive review of DUI laws.

House Bill 1189, sponsored by Rep. Joel Judd, D-Denver, would have offered first-time offenders a hard choice between a one-year driver’s license suspension or agreeing to use an intoxication-detector in their car for 11 months with a one-month suspension. The carrot-stick punishment would escalate with each offense. For example, two-time losers would face either a three-year use of an ignition interlock device plus a one-year license suspension or just give up driving for four years.

The bill hit a fiscal roadblock when Judd proposed diverting $3 million in sales-tax revenue normally used to fund highway improvements to pay for low-income offenders who couldn’t afford the $850-a-year ignition-lock device installation and monitoring fees. The money would also be used double high-visibility police DUI crackdowns up to 15 weekends annually.

But Rep. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs, led other fiscal conservatives in arguing against saddling taxpayers with the cost of anti-DUI gizmos. If drunken drivers can't pay the bill, they should find another way to get around, he said.

Democrats, however, killed Gardner's offender-pay amendment, saying that the program’s cost estimate was murky and the whole public is served by stopping the tragic fatalities caused by drunken drivers.

In the end, the bill died on a 7-to-4 vote.

Committee Chairman Terrance Carroll said he killed his fellow Denver Democrat's bill because legislators need to give the state DUI task force, created by lawmakers last year, a chance to do it works instead of continuing a patchwork of drunk-driving enforcement laws.