Brief Description: Authorizing special parking privileges for the legally blind.

Sponsors: Senate Committee on Transportation (originally sponsored by Senators Fairley, Thibaudeau and Shin).

Hearing Date: 2/20/06

Staff: David Munnecke (786-7315).

Background:

The Department of Licensing is required to grant special parking privileges to any person that has a disability that limits or impairs the ability to walk and meets one of the following criteria, as determined by a licensed physician or an advanced nurse practitioner:

• Cannot walk further than 200 feet without stopping to rest;
• Is severely limited in the ability to walk due to arthritic, neurological, or orthopedic condition;
• Is so severely disabled that the person cannot walk without an assistive device;
• Uses portable oxygen
• Is restricted by lung disease to a particular extent;
• Is impaired by cardiovascular disease or cardiac condition to a particular extent; or
• Has a disability resulting from acute sensitivity to automobile emissions that impairs the ability to walk.

Other states have added conditions that do not involve limits or impairments to the ability to walk to the list of disability that merit the granting of special parking privileges.

Summary of Bill:

The list of criteria qualifying for special parking privileges is expanded to include legal blindness.

Legally blind is defined as someone who: (a) has no vision or whose vision with corrective lenses is so limited that the individual requires alternative methods or skills to do efficiently those things that are ordinarily done with sight by individuals with normal vision; or (b) has an eye condition of a progressive nature which may lead to blindness

Technical changes are also made to the existing statutory language to remove obsolete language and conform to respectful language guidelines.

Appropriation: None.

Fiscal Note: Available.

Effective Date: The bill takes effect 90 days after adjournment of session in which bill is passed.