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

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

Senate Committee on Transportation
House Committee on Transportation

Background: The Department of Licensing (DOL) is required to grant special parking privileges to any person that has a disability that limits the ability to walk and meets one of certain criteria. A licensed physician or an advanced nurse practitioner determines whether the applicant meets the criteria.

Summary: Added to the list of criteria qualifying for special parking privileges is being legally blind with limited mobility. Legally blind is defined as someone with 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 someone who has an eye condition of a progressive nature which may lead to blindness.

Technical changes are also made to existing language; obsolete language is removed and some language is changed to conform to respectful language requirements.

Votes on Final Passage:

Senate      46   0
House      98   0   (House amended)
Senate      44   1   (Senate concurred)

Effective: June 7, 2006