One more piece of legislation that got missed.

I just did a nice, little review of the political reporters work over at Clark County's newspaper and it seems she missed a piece of legislation of Ann Rivers and Don Benton (along with some other co-sponsors?) have a piece of legislation, senate bill 5088, that would in essence elimiate a lot of wording in RCW 81.104 to the reference of "High Capacity Transit" and associated wording, that looks like it was eliminated to clean up the section:

(as of January 22, 2013, this is the current version) src: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/documents/billdocs/2013-14/Pdf/Bills/Senate%20Bills/5088.pdf

And the bill's digest suggests this is the apparent reason for the bill:

"Gives all eligible voters within the boundaries of a
transit agency the opportunity to vote on the transit agency's
plan to raise revenue for the purpose of creating a high
capacity transportation system."

and can be found at src: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/documents/billdocs/2013-14/Pdf/Digests/Senate/5088.DIG.pdf

You can further follow this bills run through the various committees and houses here:

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=5088&year=2013

WA state Senator Don Benton, the white courtesy phone is ringing..

If you do a little research, Senators Don Benton and Pam Roach are co-sponsoring a bill in the washington state senate src: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=5093&year=2013 that will affect the ability or change the wording to disallow the use of twenty dollar that municipal governments collects through the state department of licensing to not be used for "ANY THING" other than roads or highways.

Now, if you live in an area like Clark County, this may affect the ability of the constrained 2004 transit district that hovers around the smaller northern cities, the bigger brother the city of Vancouver and the urban clark county from using the revenue to benefit bus or light rail systems that is supposedly going to be built with Columbia River Crossing Project. src: http://www.columbiarivercrossing.org

This might hamper the ability of other already formed and using this same revenue through municipal governments in the state, that may use this money to fund their transit operations.

Read the legislative link, look at line 25 through 31 or so at the underline text to see the substantive change to the RCW RCW 82.80.140.

You can also find this modified language in Senate Bill 5885 being considered in the Senate Transportation committee

 "If the proposal for a high capacity transportation system plan and financing
  plan is rejected by the voters, the proposing transit agency may not
  devote any time or resources to the further development of the high
  capacity transportation system plan and financing plan until the voters
  approve the proposal. "

As it currently reads the change in bill as of January 22, 2012. This bill will be making this change in the same RCW 81.104 that contains a lot of the High Capacity Transit language and other basic transit system state language.

src: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/documents/billdocs/2013-14/Pdf/Bills/Senate%20Bills/5085.pdf

You can follow the progress of this piece of legislation and its historical record here: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=5085&year=2013

More interesting things going on with Light Rail...

Have you ever thought HOW did C-tran form?

Well, in the mid 1970s, the state of Washington formed Public Transportation Benefit Area or (PTBA) to benefit the general public of certain areas of the state of Washington within the county or locality that it is located.

Many of the smaller, outside the main huge of washington, Puget Sound are run through this law src: http://www.mrsc.org/subjects/transpo/pubtransfin.aspx

If you would like to know the taxation, formation, laws, justification or thought process behind some thing the city of Vancouver or clark county? Why not use what THEY use for research, the MRSC system or municipal research services centers for local elected officials?

Ever want to find out some obscure law or how some thing works? Try that link... Because the minutia is one way you can have fun learning some thing new about government that your elected officials may not KNOW! :)