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INSIDE THE CAPITOL

From Stu Halsan, TRAW lobbyist

February 15th, 2008

TO: TRAW members
From: Stu Halsan, TRAW lobbyist

This Session has reinforced that our first priority in the Legislature is always defense. Monitoring all the bills that are introduced and talking to Legislators to "steer" them in ways beneficial to the industry or at least not harmful.
In the third week of the session this year all heck broke loose. Two really bad bills started to move and we had to jump in and work them hard finally killing one and fixing another.

House Bill 2633 which is now dead would have required us to retain all impounds and not allow redemption until the owners had paid all outstanding traffic fines. Not only would we have been the last to be paid, we would have no way of knowing if a person owed a fine as well as what court or courts would have to give permission for the vehicles release.  We had amendments prepared to strip this out of the bill and lobbied the Transportation committee hard and the bill was never even brought up for a vote before the deadline.

The other bill, House Bill 2817 would for the first time have required us to impound meth contaminated vehicles off private property at the direction of local Health officials. Working with the sponsor I drafted language that clarified that if we contracted to move the vehicle for them we would get paid by the local government and not have to store, dispose of or in any way deal with them but merely deliver them to the police impound lot for the health folks to handle on their own and at their own expense.  This bill is still alive but with our language it may set a precedent that the proper way to handle contaminated vehicles is for us to only provide towing services and not do an impound under RCW 46.55.

Our bill to identify what vehicles with transporter plates are non-RTTO's that tow vehicles for compensation passed the House 96-1 and is now in the Senate Transportation Committee. This will be the critical first step in setting up and funding an inspection process as required by law.

Please come on the 21st and help us thank legislators and encourage them to pass our legislation.

Stu