Do boating licenses transfer between states?

Mandatory Bike Registration / Your opinions?

• Mandatory bike registration bill introduced in Salem (updated) Posted by Jonathan Maus (Editor) on March 6th, 2009 at 10:45 am Rep. Wayne Krieger is one of the bill’s sponsors. Four members of Oregon’s House of Representatives have put forward a new bill that would require all bicycles in Oregon to be registered. House Bill 3008 would establish a “bicycle registration and licensing system.” The bill would also create new offenses for altering bicycle serial numbers or licenses and for failure to register your bicycle. In addition, the bill states that, “bicycle ownership information” would be made available to law enforcement agencies and that registration, renewal and other fees would go into a Bicycle Transportation Improvement Fund that would then be used to fund “bicycle related transportation improvement projects”. The fee proposed in the bill for bike registration would be $54 and it would have to be renewed every two years for another $54. Story continues below advertisement [Joe Bike] Here’s the language that deals with the new offenses for tampering with a serial number: “A person commits the offense of altering a bicycle serial number or license if the person willfully removes, destroys, mutilates or otherwise alters the serial number or license of any bicycle.” The offense would be a Class D Traffic Violation and would come with a maximum fine of $90. Here’s the section that describes the mandatory requirement to register a bicycle: “A person 18 years of age or older commits the offense of failure to register a bicycle if the person owns a bicycle in this state and the person does not register the bicycle or renew the registration of the bicycle.” The proposed bill also says that the following information “must” be included in order to be assigned a “license number”: (a) Name of the owner of the bicycle; (b) Owner’s address and telephone number; (c) Owner’s date of birth; (d) Make of the bicycle or name of the bicycle manufacturer; (e) Model of the bicycle; (f) Wheel and frame size of the bicycle; (g) Serial number of the bicycle; and (h) Any other information the Department of Transportation considers necessary. ODOT will maintain a database of this information. In addition to the $54 fee for registration and the $54 fee for renewal, other fees include; $1 for transferring a license between bikes owned by the same person, $2 if you want a duplicate license, and $5 to transfer the license from one person to another. In another section, the bill proposes that whenever a bicycle is sold, the owner must report the sale to ODOT within 15 days and if the owner’s address changes, ODOT must also be notified within 15 days. Failure to do either of these things is punishable by a maximum fine of $25. Who will carry out the registrations? The bill says ODOT can contract with “any private person or entity or other unit of government”. The “agent” that issues the registration would keep one-third of the money and the other two-thirds would go back to ODOT. The money would got toward a new Bicycle Transportation Improvement Fund to be established in the State Treasury and would be “continuously appropriated…to pay for development and maintenance of bicycle lanes, bicycle paths and other bicycle related transportation improvement projects.” Failure to register your bike would carry a maximum fine of $25. Exceptions to the registration requirement include: “Bicycles held by bicycle dealers for sale or trade” and “bicycles not operated on the highways of this state.” (”highways” in this context mean any publicly accessible roadway).

• Answer:

  This is just another way for the Gov. to control us. This would be the start of an other way for more taxation, regulations and money to be spent on pet/pork projects. The money will not go into a bike fund but general revenue, if you think it will check on such things as the highway gas tax, lottery and tobacco funds, very little of the money ends up where promised. The gov. for quite awhile just wants to collect more taxes and control every aspect of our lives, they say off-road will be exempt, don't believe it, it might be at first but then they will go after ALL bikes in the end.