The U.S. House appears to be fast-tracking U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge's bill to crack down on oil market manipulation or excessive speculation that might be going on in energy commodities markets.

Etheridge introduced his bill Friday. He held a news conference about it Monday. Next, the House Agriculture Committee will hold a hearing. Then a committee vote. A vote on the full House floor could come as soon as Wednesday.

Such speed is virtually unheard of in Congress unless leadership wants to push something through quickly. With gas prices jumping an average of 10 cents a gallon in the past two weeks, Congress is working to prove that it's responding to public outcry.

It's unclear what effect Etheridge's bill might have on oil prices.

But over in another House committee hearing Monday, oil trading experts predicted that regulation could have an immediate effect on prices.

One oil analyst told Congress that global crude oil trading regulation "would significantly curb speculation and could burst the current oil price bubble."

Boseman moves

State Sen. Julia Boseman no longer lives at the home of lobbyist Theresa Kostrzewa.

Boseman, a Wilmington Democrat, moved out last week "out of respect for Mrs. Kostrzewa and her family," said Tom Keating, Boseman's campaign manager.

Kostrzewa and Boseman said Boseman paid $50 a night to stay in a basement apartment in Kostrzewa's Raleigh home. Boseman also paid Kostrzewa's teenage daughter to baby-sit Boseman's child.

Boseman had checked with Walker Reagan, a legislative staff attorney who helped write the lobbying and ethics laws. The new laws prevent lobbyists from offering things of value to lawmakers. Reagan told Boseman the arrangement would be legal so long as she paid a market rate.

A child custody battle caused Boseman to disclose that she had smoked marijuana in the year before her election to the legislature in 2004, and that she defaulted on a $1.3 million loan on her former home.

Boseman is not the only lawmaker to pay for housing from a lobbyist. Rep. Debbie Clary, a Cleveland County Republican, pays rent to live at the condo of lobbyist Connie Wilson.

Wilson, who left the legislature in 2004, said Clary moved in the next year and pays $450 a month, which amounts to half of the mortgage payment. Clary said she cleared the arrangement with the State Ethics Commission.

"We were very close friends in the legislature," Clary said of Wilson, who served six terms in the House. "She's never even lobbied me."

Tractor-trailer fears

Mountain roads will become dangerous and tourism will suffer if the legislature lets 53-foot-long tractor-trailers use hairpin roads where they've been ruled unsafe in the past, a Rutherford County mayor said Monday.

"My dad was a longtime truck driver, and he was one of the people that pushed for the ordinance that banned 53-foot trailers back in 1990" on several highways in Rutherford and Henderson counties, said Jim Proctor, mayor of Lake Lure. "Businesses are extremely concerned around Lake Lure because the primary industry is tourism. These large trucks are going to be dangerous and slow traffic down, and actually harm most of the businesses."

The House Transportation Committee is scheduled Wednesday to consider a bill that cleared the Senate without debate last week to allow longer trucks, wider boats and some heavier farm commodity trucks on North Carolina highways. Proctor spoke at a Raleigh news conference sponsored by the Truck Safety Coalition, a nonprofit group opposed to the measure.

The bill would end the authority of towns and the state Department of Transportation to ban 53-foot trucks from some highways, and it would allow them on all U.S. and North Carolina highways. To mark some roads off-limits, the DOT would have to convince a legislative oversight committee that it has conducted traffic engineering studies that "clearly show" some roads are unsafe.

Sherry B. Melton, spokeswoman for the N.C. Chamber of Commerce, said the legislative committee would be careful to keep long trucks off roads where they don't belong.

"The folks serving on that panel are accountable to the citizens of their districts," Melton said. "They're going to make the right decision."