If there's no state income tax...

[Hemlock140]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

The only speeding tickets I've gotten have been while driving through Indian reservations, and those tickets don't go on the state record.

My town got those radar speed check SUV's a couple of years ago. People HATE them! One guy attacked one that parked on his street at 6 a.m. I can't say they've resulted in decreased accidents. I don't know if that was the point.

Decreased accidents is always the justification, but increased revenue is a higher percentage benefit. The red light cameras in Redmond have been removed as they were problematic and actually caused accidents with people stopping short at the first sign of yellow to avoid a ticket.

[Ultrarunner]

Originally Posted by Hemlock140

I wouldn't go quite that far, but despite getting many speeding tickets in CA in my 24 years of driving there, none were for less than 10-12 mph over the limit. At traffic school the CHP officer told me that it was their policy, because there were nowhere near enough of them to enforce speed so they just go for the worst offenders. Here people get stopped for 4-5 over and there are plenty of speed traps. Here in our neighborhood now the radar cop is driving an unmarked dark silver Explorer. Last ticket I got they did remove it from my record because I had not been stopped for so long, but I still had to pay the full amount of the fine.

I found this true also...

There are several stretches of road I drive in Thurston County that are speed traps... the speed limit drops from 50 to 30 as the road widens with a nice median at one.

I always use this stretch in the road to decompress and it is one of the few places I use cruise control... set at 30 mph...

If I have someone in the car with me they always ask why I slowed down... then I point to the sign and they say no ones around... well a couple of times the officer was just around the bend...

Another is when the trooper sits in the median on I5 and just waits... almost like ducks in a pond.

[Ultrarunner]

Originally Posted by Hemlock140

Decreased accidents is always the justification, but increased revenue is a higher percentage benefit. The red light cameras in Redmond have been removed as they were problematic and actually caused accidents with people stopping short at the first sign of yellow to avoid a ticket.

Very true... I've been guilty myself of stopping short and see the flashes as others continue through.

Always sold as safety to the public... behind the scenes it is presented as revenue enhancement...

My own experience with Washington Property Tax has not been good... received an increase of 80% over what I paid for the property 18 months prior and was unsuccessful on appeal...

Someone had paid a huge price for waterfront land and it spiked everyone's taxes... everyone knew the price paid was out of this work except the assessor...

A couple of years later the property was foreclosed and sold for a fraction of assessed value... my taxes did drop a little after that... still an 80% jump is insane if you are the one paying...

[PS90]

Originally Posted by Yakscsd

This is all perspective. I find vehicle registrations here to be ridiculously cheap.

Until somewhere around 1997 (I think), car registration in WA was completely ridiculous. I remember a guy bought a new pickup, and was telling me that his annual registration was going to be about $900. And that was 15+ years ago - I think my car at that time cost about $2000. Then a guy named Tim Eyman got an initiative passed that limited car registration to $30 per year.

But, because of that and because of other tax-limiting initiatives, the liberals LOVE to hate Tim Eyman. And I'm sure someone will point-out after this comment that his car-tabs initiative was ruled unconstitutional, and that liberal state congress just kept the $30 tabs because they are so generous (had nothing to do with them being strong-armed by the overwhelming support of Eyman's initiative (sarcasm)).

Originally Posted by Hemlock140

Decreased accidents is always the justification, but increased revenue is a higher percentage benefit.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I moved away, so I'm not sure what became of it - but there was a big fuss in Wenatchee over the red-light cameras downtown, because the city council approved them despite public opposition. An attempt to get an initiative in order, to allow Wenatchee's citizens to vote on whether the red-light cameras should be removed, was vehemently opposed by the city council. Because that is the city council's job - to get more revenue, no matter what the citizens that they serve want (more sarcasm).

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by PS90

Until somewhere around 1997 (I think), car registration in WA was completely ridiculous. I remember a guy bought a new pickup, and was telling me that his annual registration was going to be about $900. And that was 15+ years ago - I think my car at that time cost about $2000. Then a guy named Tim Eyman got an initiative passed that limited car registration to $30 per year.

But, because of that and because of other tax-limiting initiatives, the liberals LOVE to hate Tim Eyman. And I'm sure someone will point-out after this comment that his car-tabs initiative was ruled unconstitutional, and that liberal state congress just kept the $30 tabs because they are so generous (had nothing to do with them being strong-armed by the overwhelming support of Eyman's initiative (sarcasm)).

I'm not sure why this is a liberal vs. conservative issue. Government needs revenue in order to operate. (You'd be surprised; for many, many years, the Berkeley City Council was oblivious to that fact.) $30 is ridiculous. Even in NM, one of the poorest states in the Union, it's $65 (for older vehicles). Of course $900 is extreme (except in Scandinavia, where it's 100%-180% of the value of your new car!), but there's a happy medium.

[PS90]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

I'm not sure why this is a liberal vs. conservative issue. Government needs revenue in order to operate. (You'd be surprised; for many, many years, the Berkeley City Council was oblivious to that fact.) $30 is ridiculous. Even in NM, one of the poorest states in the Union, it's $65 (for older vehicles). Of course $900 is extreme (except in Scandinavia, where it's 100%-180% of the value of your new car!), but there's a happy medium.

I totally agree that government needs revenue to operate. Where it becomes a liberal vs. conservative issue is the disagreement on how much is needed for certain projects. For example, I personally don't feel that I need to be paying taxes to support free daycare for the children of undocumented immigrants. The more that is cut from projects like that, the less that cheap car tabs hurt the state government. But that's neither here nor there...

BTW, is the STATE car registration in NM $65, or is the ENTIRE car registration $65? Because almost no one in WA actually pays $30 due to all the local excise taxes added on. My tabs in little ol' Stevens County is about $58. I'm sure it's plenty more than that in King County.

[MarciaMarshaMarcia]

Originally Posted by Hemlock140

I wouldn't go quite that far, but despite getting many speeding tickets in CA in my 24 years of driving there, none were for less than 10-12 mph over the limit. At traffic school the CHP officer told me that it was their policy, because there were nowhere near enough of them to enforce speed so they just go for the worst offenders. Here people get stopped for 4-5 over and there are plenty of speed traps. Here in our neighborhood now the radar cop is driving an unmarked dark silver Explorer. Last ticket I got they did remove it from my record because I had not been stopped for so long, but I still had to pay the full amount of the fine.

BTW, courtesy of several people I know who have received "speeding" (?) tickets in Washington, I learned that, at the discretion of the judge, an individual can have the ticket not shown on their driving record...if there have been no prior violations for the previous 7 years...of course, the fine is still paid.

[StealthRabbit]

Originally Posted by thisplacesucks

BTW, courtesy of several people I know who have received "speeding" (?) tickets in Washington, I learned that, at the discretion of the judge, an individual can have the ticket not shown on their driving record...if there have been no prior violations for the previous 7 years...of course, the fine is still paid.

You can also get a speeding ticket 'deferred' / not logged, if you can go 2 more yrs w/o another moving violation / ticket (fine will be imposed).

[fishbrains]

Washington does a weird thing where state government charges itself sales tax. When I purchase an item at work for my agency I have to pay sales tax.

[StealthRabbit]

Originally Posted by fishbrains

Washington does a weird thing where state government charges itself sales tax. When I purchase an item at work for my agency I have to pay sales tax.

of course if your 'agency' is the WA DOR... and you are an auditor, you know quite well why this is...

There are a lot of fingers in the WA sales tax pot, and you (as in WA State) are not alone!
we who file our qtrly reports have to report how much business we did with each ot the taxing districts we do commerce with (within the state). It is really fun, and a great use of our time to split hairs.