State Rep. Judy Clibborn, the chairwoman of the House Transportation Committee, said it hadn’t even occurred to her that Sound Transit would use the older method to calculate car-tab fees, which lawmakers long ago decided was unfair.
“Sometimes if you don’t think to ask the question, you make an assumption, because it’s not even on your radar screen,” said Clibborn, D-Mercer Island.
> The language that specified how the agency would calculate car-tab fees was included in every version of the transportation revenue bill lawmakers considered in 2015, dating to at least four months before the measure was finally approved.
> The topic even came up on the Senate floor in February 2015, when the Senate voted down a proposed amendment to change the car-tab valuation schedule to a third, completely different formula.
> “Each step of the way, this language was there,” said state Sen. Marko Liias, D-Lynnwood, one of the negotiators of the 2015 transportation package. Liias explained how the car-tab fees would be calculated in a short speech during the 2015 floor debate.
Again, you can claim it was misleading, but you can't call it fraudulent.
This is the sort of obviously important detail you expect staffers to be on top of. It's silly to later claim no one had thought of what method would be used to calculate the value of a car when enforcing a percentage tax on the value.
“Sometimes if you don’t think to ask the question, you make an assumption, because it’s not even on your radar screen,” said Clibborn, D-Mercer Island.
http://www.theolympian.com/news/politics-government/article1...