Full text here.

You have got to be kidding me. This changes budget deadlines to be 20 days earlier. This kind of stuff should REALLY not need a ballot measure to approve. Sigh. Crazy.

Having said that, I have no objections, so…

My vote is:

YES

Full text is here.

This would allow the County Council to establish additional qualifications for certain elected positions. (For instance, requiring that a Sheriff have law enforcement experience.)

I fundamentally think that any position that really and truly requires very specific qualifications should be an appointed position, not an elected position. If however a position is made an election position, regardless of the job description, then the voters should have full and total authority to vote in whoever they want. (I’d even disagree with age and citizenship requirements and such… if it is an elected position, let the voters decide… let them vote for a ripe watermelon if they really want to for that matter.)

Voters may sometimes be stupid, but the nature of a democracy is that if the voters want something, they get it… and often it is exactly what they deserve when they make a stupid choice. But the whole point is that it is the choice of the electorate. And MOST of the time, they make decent decisions.

This change is unnecessary and stupid. And it is only even being considered because there are elected positions that should not be elected positions in the first place.

My vote:

NO

Full text here.

Basically adds disability and sexual orientation to the list of things that the County can’t discriminate against in hiring or contracting.

I am generally opposed to laws that in any way whatsoever restrict who PRIVATE entities can hire or why they can hire them. That includes non-discrimination laws. I think private entities should be able to do whatever the hell they want, and if they make decisions in ways other than merit alone, they will suffer the economic consequences of that stupid choice.

However, this is GOVERNMENTAL hiring and contracting. I very much think the government should be required to not discriminate on irrelevant attributes. If I was doing such, I would not give a list of things you can’t discriminate on, I would instead require that ONLY attributes directly relevant to the candidate (or contractor’s) ability to accomplish the tasks required of them for the position / assignment could be taken into account. (Of course, this would prohibit any and all forms of affirmative action as well, which would be a good thing.) This does not go that far.

But I guess as long as you are going to have things on a list, it is OK for these things to be on the list too.

My vote:

YES

The full text is here (pdf).

Basically, this would require, in the words of the summary “long-term care workers to be certified as home care aides”. It basically establishes a set of education and training requirements and requires that these workers be registered by the state and licensed.

I am fundamentally opposed at a very basic level to the government licensing ANYTHING. (And yes, that probably even includes drivers.) It is just plain none of the government’s business to keep track of such things, or to set requirements. This is not to say that it is not good for such workers to have training, background checks, etc. It is just to say that I do not believe this should be government’s job.

There are various private solutions for this. Government does NOT need to be involved.

It needs to be the responsibility of those hiring for these sorts of workers to check qualifications to whatever degree they deem necessary (or not). And of course government should be involved if there is fraud or mistreatment or the like. But making sure that workers get some sort of mandatory training and then providing a license and keeping a big registry of such people? No thanks. Much too big brother for me.

There can also be plenty of room for private providers of certifications that would gain reputations and be looked for by those doing hiring. But such things need to be voluntary, not mandated by law… both for the person looking to do work, and the person or organization looking to hire them.

Therefore, my vote here is:

NO

Therefore

Of course I didn’t even get to spend any time with the ballot at all yesterday because I was doing other things, and I actually had the nerve to sleep. So now, here it is, election day, and I still haven’t started on the 35 items on my ballot. Well, here we go. Here is the first one.

The full text of Initiative is here (pdf). Basically, it is about neutering HOV lanes. Generally, that is something I approve of. I think HOV lanes are annoying social engineering to try to get me to not drive my car alone. I think that is annoying and I don’t like it. Anything that would move in the direction of eliminating that sort of thing is great.

It also has some seemingly common sense things like requiring traffic light synchronization and some other stuff like that.

However… I have a number of problems with this anyway.

First, it seems like this is the sort of thing that really should be determined either by the legislature, or by non-political bureaucracies. I generally don’t like Initiatives. This is what we elect legislators for. So if they are used, it seems like they should be used for issues where there is a real reason why the legislature is not adequate. I’m not sure this is such a case.

Second, it hard codes into the law what “peak hours” are for purposes of allowing open use of HOV lanes in non-peak hours. That is silly, and does not properly allow for changes in usage patterns over time. If you were going to have a policy to allow something in non-peak hours, you should make an objective definition of that based on something that can properly be adjusted over time without a change in the law. I won’t try to be a traffic engineer and make that definition, but it definately should not be a fixed set of hours. It should be something based on current level of traffic flows, where if the flow was some fraction of peak traffic, it would be considered “off-peak”. Of course, in truly non-peak conditions, using the HOV lanes or not is a non-issue, as all lanes are flowing freely, perhaps making this irrelevant. This whole idea only makes sense if you are opening the HOV lanes during hours where traffic is still congested…

Third, according to the financial impact statement, the cost of the transition would be significant.

Fourth, the initiative includes a lengthy new section being added to the RCW (Revised Code of Washington) which explains the “intent” of the various changes. In general, I don’t like laws explicitly stating their intent. I don’t care what their intent is, other than what the words of the law itself says. I know this is a common practice of course, but I still don’t like it. But this statement in specific is not just describing the intent, but also includes a long litany describing the history of these efforts, how the efforts were rebuffed in the past, etc. It just sounds like a bitter diatribe about this whole thing. That sort of thing is fine for the summary statement (maybe) but should not be part of the initiative itself.

So, with all that, despite the fact that I generally agree with many of the goals of this initiative, I find the implementation fatally flawed.

My vote is therefore:

NO