Northwest Cycle Report

Ian King, President of the Washington Road Riders Association, sent me the following update on the Governor’s Task Force on Motorcycle Safety. They are looking for input from riders.

The work product of the Governor’s Task Force on Motorcycle Safety is wendingits way through the process, and when the policy folks (who write bills to makethings actually happen) got their look at it, they had some questions.  SoDirector Liz Luce, Assistant Director Becky Loomis, Program Coordinator CarlSpurgeon and some other DOL folks contacted us in the motorcycle community andasked if we could chat about this just a little bit more.

THE SHORT STORY

Everything is OK.  We are NOT getting screwed.  Good things will most likelyhappen.  :-)  For more understanding, read on….

THE LONG STORY

Wednesday of last week, Larry Walker and I visited with several DOL officials,including the Director herself.  (Rich Bright of ABATE of Washington wasinvited, but was unable to attend; he and I have discussed these notes, and hetold me he was pleased with the outcome.)  The questions were around how wewould fund an increase in motorcycle safety training.  The task force hadcontemplated an increase of 6,000 available training slots per year, but programmanagers threw out a reality check: given current trends in hiring, it isextremely unlikely we could find and train enough instructors to achieve thatgoal!  Imagine building a dozen new schools, but finding no teachers to work inthem….  So they recommended scaling expectations back to 3,000 new studentbillets a year - still ambitious, but more achievable.  Given that change, theysaid, the money issues were different that what we’d discussed, and the goodnews is they felt we could increase training without adding to motorcycleregistration fees - woohoo!  (For the record: the task force NEVER recommendedincreasing endorsement fees.)

But there’s still no free lunch, and in the discussion about how to fund newtraining there were some questions and, as it turned out, miscommunications.The task force contemplated the possibility that the cost to the student,currently capped at $100, might rise to $125.  DOL was targeting an averagesubsidy (from the safety education fund) of $85 per student, which meantsustainable funding.  When we did the math in our working session, the $85average all penciled out.  But the policy folks, hearing $85 per student (andapparently missing the ‘average’ part), proposed changing the rules to establisha cap on the subsidy, not on the tuition.

What’s the difference?  In King County, training companies enjoy a lot of freeasphalt, courtesy of folks like the City of Seattle, King County and the BoeingCompany (consider buying one of their planes next time you’re in the market fora jumbo jet).  But in other areas, contractors find they must buy land and pourtheir own blacktop - that’s expensive.  Today, those courses receive a highersubsidy to keep the price at $100 per student.  But if you look at a limit onthe subsidy, instead of on the tuition, some of those contractors would need tocharge $200 or more per student to cover expenses!  That was never the intentionof the task force; our goal was to make training more available, NOT to createan inequity in availability (or cost) across the state.  Uh-uh, no way.

So what’s a girl to do?  Warning: I am about to be shameful in my praise of theDepartment of Licensing team, who listened with wide open ears and minds andheard the concerns of the motorcycle community: we cannot support a plan thatcreates an unfair burden outside of King County.  After relatively briefconversation, DOL saw the point of debate - the difference between cappingtuition and capping subsidy - and rethunk themselves.  We took a break, Larryand I got coffee (you wouldn’t believe what that man pours in his pie-hole) andDOL completely redid their spreadsheets.

The result: DOL is doing their math with the idea of keeping but raising thetuition cap from $100 to $125 (still a $50 cap for minors), and - hold onto yourjockey shift - reassigning the $5 they get from the initial endorsementprocessing to motorcycle safety training.  That $5 is something the Departmentgets to keep today, to cover processing costs and miscellaneous mish-mash.Instead, it’s on the table to balance the books for increased training.  Anotherpiece is tapping into the training reserve, which is not small; by the time weneed to replenish it, assuming things go to plan, we’ll have a bunch moreendorsed riders paying in.  And everyone lived happily ever after….

CAVEATS: these are still recommendations, and have not yet been included in anyformal proposal or plan.  No laws or rules have been changed, no bills are inplay.  But given the conversations I’ve had with motorcyclists from all over thestate, both in WRRA and elsewhere, I am confident these potential changes aresomething we can support.  It’s still motorcyclists paying for safetyeducation - this makes sense, as we are beholden to no one about it.  It’ssomething that, if it goes forward, goes through the Legislature in the processwe all know and love and can see and affect.  This money is safe from budgetcreep and pork barrel harvesters and “reallocations,” under existing law.  Andif things fall through and nothing changes?  Well, nothing changes - we have thesame system, the same safety training and the same funding we’ve always had.The fallback is to a process that’s been working for several years and is amodel across the nation.

In this process, DOL has been true to their promise of partnership with themotorcycle community, engaging in honest discussion with us and seeking notagreement *from* us but *with* us - a big difference.  It was the sort ofdiscussion I see in the world of private-sector business and call “win-win,” butthis was with a state agency - boy, there’s a whole class of political jokes Ijust don’t feel right telling anymore.

I feel good about this - how about you?  As always, I hope you will share yourquestions, thoughts and opinions with me, and if you aren’t available for ournext meeting (on October 1) I will share them with everyone in attendance.  I’mquite positive about the path before us, and I believe that together we cancontinue to improve the safety of the road through freedom to to choose andeducation to make good choices.

Ian King, President
Washington Road Riders Association
http://www.roadriders.org