The judge who tossed out the Monorail Recall initiative based his ruling in part on the fact that
the new monorail "has been designated as an essential public facility" and that it can't be stopped by an initiative.What constitutes an "essential public facility"?
solid waste handling facilities, and inpatient facilities including substance abuse facilities, mental health facilities, and group homesWhen you consider the sort of people who work for the Monorail, I suppose that most of the above might apply. Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at August 13, 2004 06:07 PM
That 'essential public facility' concept was deliberately inserted into the antidemocratic Growth Management Act to supress political resistance by NIMBY activists to sewage treatment plants, etc. The oh-so-elite 1000 Friends of Washington had enough lawyers on board during the drafting of GMA that they devised the EPF principle as a tool to, how to say it... CRUSH DISSENT by the unwashed. And now Judge Gonzalez has used the principle to do just that.
The State of Washington would do well to reexamine its politically correct legislation and excise the worst of the antidemocratic bits. Given enough time and a less ideological electorate, by golly, we might even excise all of them.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on August 14, 2004 11:48 AM