Your legislature in action

The following email sent to my state representative (with a comparable one to my state senator, who only voted in favor of the Idaho Stop law):

For the initiated, Oregon implemented 1) a law allowing bicycles to run stop signs if the consider it safe in their opinion to do so and 2) a law banning bags – that is unless you purchase said bags from the store at checkout time. Both of these laws were announced at the beginning of the year or when you went to the store and couldn’t get your groceries bagged.

Dear Representative Williams,

Much to my surprise, two new laws went into effect on January 1st of this year that had been given little press even though they affected everyone a great deal.  Admittedly, it is every citizen’s responsibility to keep informed but given the situation whereby we get our news via television, radio, and the internet some things that I personally would have been more aware of now seem to get past me.  It also seems that there was more than a little effort on the part of the legislature to slow play these bills, giving them little or no publicity despite their far-reaching effects.  These efforts were successful.  I did not even know about them until after they were already in effect and in force.

The worse part of this is that they,  by their very nature, cater to a minority of special interests.   And you supported both of those bills.  You can argue that they are for the betterment of society.  Maybe.  I might even grant you have an argument on one of them.  But the fact that the majority of voters had absolutely no input into this is quite ludicrous.

The first of these bills is the so-call “Idaho Stop” law.  Calling a “stop” law when if allows the running of stop signs just shows how foolish the law is.  Before you try to use statistics to defend this bill, know that I have heard those statistics for years and have yet to see the verifiable facts to support the claims that seem to be generated primarily from bicycle-centric sources.  I could give you all of the counter arguments but it is too late for that, as you and your fellow legislators have already passed the bill into law without what I would consider due diligence.  How do I know this?  Good old critical thinking and logic should have raised red flags all over the place.  Because the claims in support of this law just do not smell right.  That did not stop you from supporting the bill anyway, now did it.

Now we get to the bag law.  I will not even ask you what you were thinking.  I kind of figured that one out all by myself.  You know, it might be the right way to go.  I know why you passed the law on the “down low” and why you kept it that way.  You knew the push back would have been big.  That is also why you did not refer this to the vote of the people as it probably should have been.  Who knows, that may still happen.  Maybe this law is something that needed to be done, but the way it was done was rather poor.  To top it off, you and your fellow legislators were so intent on passing this bill that you did not put into place a public notice or phase in process like reasonable people should have done.  If you cannot shout your convictions from the rooftops, they are not true convictions, just conveniences.

Your support of these bills will make it very difficult for me to every support you in any of your endeavors in the future. Not for your convictions but for 1) not looking out for the people, and 2) not keeping us informed on things that affect our daily lives. 

Sincerely,

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