Posted on 05/08/2003 5:25:42 PM PDT by Eala
SEATTLE - "It's all about safety."
That's been the Washington State Patrol mantra around the "Click it or Ticket" law.
Of course, now we come to find that writing 3 seatbelt tickets an hour means that troopers can "safely" pocket overtime pay.
The devil, as they say, is in the details.
And the details are in a contract with the State Traffic Safety Commission and law enforcement agencies, including the state patrol.
The contract spells out how federal money is funneled into enforcement of the seat-belt law: write "x" number of tickets and the state gets federal grant money, which in turn can be divvied up as overtime to law enforcement.
"x" in this case is 3; 3 tickets per hour, per trooper.
Naturally, official folks are falling all over their thesauruses trying to come up with another word for "quota."
My favorite so far in "minimal expectation."
I'm hoping someone will eventually use "harmonic proportion."
State patrol officials have said the whole thing seems quite reasonable to them.
I'll bet it does.
I mean, what could POSSIBLY be unreasonable about putting a bounty on unbuckled drivers.
For their own safety, of course.
Want to share your thoughts with Ken Schram? You can e-mail him at kenschram@komo4news.com
This is so true! My wife and I are involved as citizen lobbyists whenever our legislature is in session. It's been appalling to see the legislation filed just because there are federal funds attached. Last year we went after a bill filed to avoid a loss of $1 million in federal funding. It didn't matter that our analysis showed that the bill would incur costs to the state greater than that $1 million of federal money; it sailed right on through.
Is there any way to challenge the ticket? What evidence do they have other than your confession? I just got one at the airport. As I pulled in the officer pulled me over and said I was speeding (I wasn't - I was going the same speed as everyone else - there was heavy traffic. It may have been that everyone was speeding - there were a couple hundred cars within view (MPLS airport)Then he said he would not issue me a speeding ticket but noticed that I had no seat belt on. He said they were out to enforce safe and sober (5pm on Sunday??) which includes clickit or ticket.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.