OLYMPIA — Rep. Lynn Kessler’s bill to repeal the $5 parking fee at state parks is alive again — and now she also has a backup plan.
House Bill 2416, co-sponsored by Kessler, would eliminate the $5 parking fee at state parks enacted in January 2003 without replacing it with a voluntary vehicle registration fee.
It passed the House by a 94-2 vote on Feb. 13.
But Sen. Ken Jacobsen, D-Seattle, abruptly adjourned the Senate Natural Resources, Ocean and Recreation Committee’s final meeting on Thursday without voting whether to send Kessler’s bill to the full Senate for a vote.
After fellow Senate Democrats protested, Jacobsen called an emergency committee meeting Friday afternoon.
The panel voted to send the bill to the Senate Ways and Means Committee, the final step for a vote by the full Senate.
The parking fee repeal bill could have a hearing there as early as Monday afternoon.
‘A little high drama’
“There was a little high drama,” Kessler said Friday afternoon on the telephone from the House floor.
“I called the majority leader over in the Senate and a couple of my friends, so they got it out.”
Kessler said a newspaper account that described her as “livid,” was accurate.
“It was very unpleasant. I don’t do that often. It’s not a pretty sight.
“He (Sen. Jacobsen) did say he would allow a vote on it although he said he didn’t,” she said.
She also has “a little backup plan” of including $2.8 million in the House’s supplemental budget to end the $5 parking fee until July 1, 2007, Kessler said.
“That gives me a chance to come back and find a funding source and make the free parking permanent, which I’ve been saying all along it should be,” she said.