Legislative Alert
Posted by Warren Enos on 15 May 2008 | Tagged as: California Legislative Matters
AB 190 FREE PARKING FOR SOME VETERANS
This is an update on our effort to secure a much deserved recognition to the veterans who gave so much while serving in the armed forces protecting this country.
The California Assembly recently passed 72-1 Assembly Bill 190 (Bass) allowing those Veterans whose automobile license plate shows they received the Medal of Honor, Legion of Valor, American Prisoner of War, Pearl Harbor Survivor, or Purple Heart, free parking at all curbside meters.
A heartfelt thanks and expression of gratitude to those individuals and organizations/associations that sent letters, faxes and email to one of the following addresses:
Speaker Karen Bass Fax: (916) 319-2147 Email: Torch.Sathienmars@asm.ca.gov
Attn: Torch Sathienmars CA State Capitol Room 319 Sacramento, CA 95814
To those who might have missed writing or faxing to one of the addresses above, we really need your correspondence immediately as the bill will be heard in the State Senate Transportation Committee on June 17. Only with your help will we be successful.
Clint Steed - UVC News
Submitted By: Bob Butcher
One Response to “Legislative Alert”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Bob:
This is an example of the power a person has when they are elected as Speaker of the Assembly! Speaker Bass introduced a bill in the Assembly last year, almost exactly the same as this one, but it failed to pass in the Senate Committee. AB 190 was an entirely different bill that was pending earlier this year and a “gut and amend” procedure was used to take the language from the earlier bill and try to run it through again. Actually, it was pushed through before she took office but she has been the “Speaker-elect” for some weeks now and if she wants to make a gesture such as this, her comrades in the Assembly would not say no.
So far, there are no official supporters of this bill. However, the California State Commanders Veterans Council did support the previous bill in 2007. Personally, I do not think the bill is a good idea. There are adequate laws for special parking privileges by handicapped persons, both veterans and the general public. This bill would affect approximately 11,000 persons in the entire state, many of whom are already covered by the handicapped parking permits. It has so many conditions to the special parking privileges for non-handicapped persons that it would be extremely difficult to enforce. However, I would expect that the veteran organizations would want to support the bill as they did with the previous version last year.
Bill Manes