Election Day

It was election day yesterday, and although not the big one there were still plenty of initiatives and local/state elections being held.  The most newsworthy one that came out of our region was that an initiative to cut most car tabs in our state to $30 looks like it is going to pass.  This is huge – this is where the money comes from to pay for road paving and these huge transportation and infrastructure projects.  It doesn’t surprise me that this initiative passed – I’ve got to renew my car tabs this month and the bill is outrageous, nearly $300.  I think the state overreached in tacking on such a huge “regional transit authority tax” (nearly 2/3 of my bill) to the amount we have to pay, and so people rebelled by backing this measure.  I think we all still want well maintained roads and good public transport options, and I think we are prepared to pay more on our car tabs to achieve that – but not at the amount they are currently adding.  What is interesting is that they clearly spent a lot of money on ads to oppose this initiative – I saw plenty of them on tv – but it still wasn’t enough to make voters change their mind.  So now we can expect some kind of transportation crisis in our state – let’s hope we don’t a have bad winter that reduces our roads to a pot-holed disaster.