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Dori: Sound Transit wins car tabs suit — and will again at Supreme Court

Sep 7, 2018, 5:29 PM

Digital license plates, car tabs, car tab relief, car-tab fees, licensing...

(MyNorthwest)

(MyNorthwest)

A judge in the Pierce County Superior Court has just ruled that Sound Transit can continue to illegally take your money. A judge is supposed to stop illegal stuff, right? The argument in the suit was that Sound Transit essentially lied to you through the ST3 ballot measure because people didn’t know how much their car tabs would go up.

Now, if you had listened to my show before that 2016 vote, you knew, because I gave you the numbers. But Sound Transit did everything it could to delude people. They are using an incorrect, illegal vehicle valuation system in King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties to calculate car tabs — in some cases, they have your vehicle valued at double what it’s actually worth. They do stuff like the mob does.

So a judge at the superior court level apparently may not be equipped to deal with the nuances of this case. According to 28th Leg. Dist. Sen. Steve O’Ban (R-Tacoma), the judge’s opening words before the court were, “This is above my pay grade.”

RELATED: We want our money back from ST3, says Sen. Fortunato

“We were shocked that she didn’t put more time and energy into this … this was a really important meaty case,” O’Ban said.

Now it’s going to an appellate judge who might be more able to understand the nuances of a government agency stealing money from you. How can a judge not be equipped to figure out that a government agency is illegally calculating the value of your vehicles so they can illegally take, in some cases, twice as much money as the law would call for? How can that be above a judge’s pay grade?

After that it will go to the Washington state Supreme Court. And we all know how that is going to go, because the Democratic Party owns the Washington state Supreme Court. So regardless of the merits of legal arguments, the Supreme Court will not go against their masters here in Washington. So ultimately, Sound Transit will continue to illegally collect hundreds of dollars a year in car tabs from every car owner in the district.

We have one of the state constitutions that is best at protecting our personal and private property rights, but when you have a Supreme Court that is there to do the bidding of one party, what are those of us who are not of that ideology to do in Washington?

“The Soviet Union had a great constitution, but if you don’t have offices that are going to enforce and uphold it, it means nothing,” O’Ban said jokingly.

The Supreme Court was bought and paid for. They do not rule by the Constitution. They do not rule by the law. They rule by party. That’s how things are going in our state right now. We’ve got rogue corruption everywhere.

O’Ban remains more optimistic.

“I always have hope with our judiciary that it regains, recovers its independence … hope springs eternal, and maybe the Supreme Court will get one right here,” he said.

What made me even angrier — though not surprised — was finding out from O’Ban that Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s office showed up in the courtroom supporting Sound Transit.

“His office stood there right next to Sound Transit and supported Sound Transit’s position, and argued against taxpayers,” O’Ban said. “So rather than being neutral or passive, he actually stepped up today and supported Sound Transit.”

As we know, all Bob Ferguson cares about is becoming our next governor. He knows that to do that, he has to court favor with groups like Sound Transit and the teachers union, the law be damned.

King County wants to charge utilities rent for the use of roads

There is one other tax story though that is a little more optimistic — King County wanted to charge utilities rent for the use of roads. They wanted to jack up your utilities by maybe more than $100 a year. Those roads don’t belong to the King County Council; they belong to you and me, the taxpayers. But the King County Council thinks they’re our masters.

I’m happy to say that King County Superior Court Judge Samuel Chung smacked that one down, saying there is no precedence for that. But the King County Council has said it will pursue this to the Supreme Court, which goes back to what I said before. It is a pre-ordained decision because our Supreme Court has been bought and paid for by the Democrats.

That’s where we’re at with these lower rulings; we’re 1-1 after today. We should be confident with these lower rulings, we should be 2-0, we should be confident that the Supreme Court will protect our rights, but we can’t be. That’s not the way things operate in SayWA.

I think Bob Ferguson and our state Supreme Court have dangerously rigged this state. You have one party that has decided to completely abandon the principles of the law and the state constitution. And I really do find it frightening.

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Dori: Sound Transit wins car tabs suit — and will again at Supreme Court