This post has been updated to reflect the fact that the UW bill would not allow cities to pass a per-stall parking tax in lieu of a commercial parking tax on gross receipts.
1. Yesterday afternoon, the state house transportation committee voted to pass Rep. Marko Liias’ (D-21, Edmonds) temporary transit funding bill allowing local governments to impose a temporary $30 “congestion fee” on cars.
A bipartisan duo of King County Council members, Democrat Joe McDermott and Republican Jane Hague, had come down to Olympia a day earlier to testify in favor. However, the vote itself split along party lines with 15 Democrats voting yes and 13 Republicans voting no.
The ranking Republican on the committee, Rep. Mike Armstrong (R-12, Wenatchee), had originally co-sponsored the bill, but voted no yesterday. The bill did not include Armstrong’s proposal to stipulate that the fee must be approved by voters.
Liias is also pushing a permanent transit funding solution—including an option for a motor vehicle excise tax—that would require voter approval.
2. The view from the top of Sound Transit’s Capitol Hill station construction crane yesterday:
Nice.
3. While state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles’ (D-36, Ballard, Queen Anne) medical marijuana bill did pass out of committee earlier this week (with bipartisan support), the Cannabis Defense Coalition says changes proposed by committee chair Sen. Karen Keiser (D-33, Kent) weakened the bill.
The CDC highlights a few unkindly provisions: “unlicensed collective grows would be limited to 3 participating patients, down from 25,” patients would be required “to pay retail sales tax on medical cannabis, in addition to the B&O taxes dispensers and producers would pay,” and the amendment would “remove civil penalties for law enforcement” who access or release information on registered medical cannabis patients.
The new amendments would also require that physicians thoroughly examine patients and try other forms of medication before prescribing cannabis. A new provision would also allow the Department of Health to determine whether or not a doctor was authorizing an “inappropriate” level of cannabis prescriptions and would give the DOH the power to take action against such a physician.
Finally, the CDC also points out an amendment by Sen. Randi Becker (R-2, Eatonville) that “gutted the arrest protection” provision in the bill—a provision cheered by the ACLU that ensured medical marijuana patients wouldn’t be inadvertently busted. The new version only provides protection for only those who have previously “voluntarily registered with the state.”
4. State senate majority leader Sen. Lisa Brown (D-3, Spokane) says state employees and undocumented immigrants, the go-to scapegoats in the current budget crisis, are not the problem. Read her entire statement, posted on the senate Democrats’ blog, here.
Here’s what she says about the “misconception” that undocumented immigrants are to blame for the $4.6 billion shortfall:
There are services within state government that may be accessed by undocumented immigrants, but not many.
Here’s a chart of some major cash and medical assistance programs administered by the state – of the 14 listed here, undocumented immigrants are eligible for only four. Chief among them is the Children’s Health Program, the intent of which is to make sure that children who are undocumented through no fault of their own can still receive medical care when they get sick or injured.
As with nearly all programs for which undocumented immigrants are currently eligible, this program was eliminated in the Governor’s budget proposal. Lawmakers will look for a way to maintain this humane and cost-effective service. But even if we are unable to do so, eliminating it will only solve one percent of our problem.
Yet – even still – the Legislature must limit the availability of public services to narrower segments of the population if we are to maintain services at all. As an example, the budget plan passed last week by the Senate requires a valid social security number for eligibility into the Basic Health Plan.
5. Andrew Lewis at the Associated Students of UW called Fizz yesterday to give us more details about the legislation we covered briefly yesterday morning that would give the university a break on the city’s commercial parking tax. (Earlier this year, the UW unsuccessfully sought an exemption from a recent increase in the parking tax from the city, arguing that because the U.W. funds bus passes with parking revenues, the tax, a disincentive for parking, would reduce funding for the bus-subsidy program.)
The bill would exempt public universities from the commercial parking tax “in an amount equal to or more than the amount invested by such institution in the commute trip reduction program.”
Lewis says the ASUW is talking with the city about raising the commercial parking tax further to fund a grant program that would allow the UW to pay for its bus-pass subsidy.
