Thanks to those of you who offered responses to my first question. I was also wondering if I could just wait until November to buy my car, after the election. Would I get the $30 tabs then, too?

I don't want to wait until after the New Year because I want to have financing doen before the holidays.

Will this work? And to let you anti-695 people know: I have not talked to ONE person who is voting no on this thing. Taxpaers want lower tabs!

-- Sonia (sonia_900@yahoo.com), September 10, 1999

Answers

No. IF the initiative is constitutional, it could be effective on 12/2/1999 based on a provision in the state constitution. The initiative itself gives an effective date of 1/1/2000. It will not be effective in November 1999, under any scenario. As I noted before, expect a court to decide about this sometime in 2000, and it is anyones guess what will be in effect until a court decision is rendered.

-- dbvz (dbvz@wa.freei.net), September 10, 1999.

dbvz,

I agree with your answer to Sonia. But the court challenge is what scares me.

One has to look no further then the state level term limits issue which was passed a couple of years ago. Of course our elected officials put themselves ahead of what the voters wanted.

Now where did it end up? In the state supreme court, with who else but career politician Phil Tellmadge making the decision. Do you think someone like that will let his buddies down? I think not.

-- Wayne Alishokis (wga1943@yahoo.com), September 11, 1999.

This forum seems to attract everyone who has lost all confidence, and respect, for the institutions of government. I blame that on Nixon for Watergate, and Clinton for Monica and Whitewater.

The word "politician" is not necessarily a bad name, if they work in the public interest. We have a part-time legislature that we elect, who spend most of their time working and living in the real world like the rest of us. The only way they can get to be a career politician in this state, is if they win repeated election to one of the relatively few full-time elected positions in state or local government. If we keep electing them, isn't that some kind of endorsement of the job they are doing? I always thought so.

As for the state Supreme Court, this will not be finally decided by one judge. In any case, judges hate to be overturned on appeal, and do what they can to assure their decisions are according to the applicable law even when it results in a decision they would personally prefer not to make. It is that role of dispensing impartial justice that should add to the respect given to them for an often difficult and personally stressful responsibility.

If the established legal precidents, and the state constitution, require the Supreme Court to uphold the validity of I-695, I expect that will be the decision. If those precidents and the constitution require that all or part of the initiative be declaired invalid, I expect that to be the decision. I am not an attorney, and those that have written on this initiative have given differing interpretations of what it means. That alone leads me to wonder if it will be considered unacceptably vague and unenforcable due to the ambiguity.

Whatever the decision, when it gets through the Supreme Court we live by the result - until some new legislation or initiative changes the rules again at least. These institutions of government are here to assure that our public, "corporate", acts are done decently and in good order. It is often a thankless job, because you can't please everyone all the time. This initiative has been described as a "slap in the face" of government; and I believe it is, and that it is unfair to the men an women that we elect to office and do the best they can at balancing preferences and priorities and legal requirements in the decisions they are asked to make.

The only fear I have regarding the court decision, is that the process will take time, and things will be very uncertain until the decisions are rendered. Local governments are planning budgets now for 2000, and taxes are to increase in 2000 to fund those budgets. If the initiative were clearer, the uncertainty would be reduced; but it is to late to do anything about that now. We just wait and see.

-- dbvz (dbvz@wa.freei.net), September 11, 1999.