My Effort To Kill MOST
The current MOST site.
After I wrote that post on Monday about needing to get rid of the Colorado Motorcycle Operator Safety Training program (MOST) I decided the most logical thing to do would be to contact the legislator who was carrying the bill. That would be Rep. Tom Sullivan who represents District 37 in Arapahoe County. Here is what I wrote.
Hello Rep. Sullivan. I see that you are sponsoring the sunset renewal of the Motorcycle Operator Safety Training program and that is what I wish to address.
This program seems to be on autopilot for renewal and it really should not be. When MOST was created we motorcyclists supported it and we supported paying extra on our license and plate renewals to pay for it. It was intended to promote rider safety by subsidizing the cost of rider training, and for a long time that is what it did. Administration of the program was to take no more than 15% of the funds raised.
Now there is no trainee subsidy at all and while the state agency doing the administering presumably spends no more than 15%, an outside vendor has been brought in to actually run the program, at a considerably higher cost, in addition to what the state spends. And where does the rest of the money go? No one seems to be able to offer an adequate answer to that question.
We motorcyclists are not getting our money’s worth and I for one am no longer happy to pay that money if I’m not getting what I’m paying for.
But you will not hear the training organizations calling for elimination of MOST because without MOST they would not be able to certify their trainees as having passed the riding portion of the test. Thus, riders would have less incentive to get training and we would probably end up with more untrained and unlicensed riders on the road and the training organizations would suffer a loss of income.
What is really needed, and I’m calling on you for this, is to rewrite current legislation or write new legislation that would allow the elimination of MOST or else its significant revision so that the trainers can still certify but we eliminate all the bureaucracy. I would think simply one dollar on each motorcycle plate renewal would be plenty to pay the moderate costs of ensuring that all training vendors meet the standards and the rest of what we pay can be cut.
Or maybe you have a better idea. I’d be interested to hear it. What I am not interested in hearing is that this Frankenstein thing that MOST has turned into gets automatically renewed for five more years.
Thank you for your time.
Who knows, maybe if a lot of us wrote to him he would pay attention. Wouldn’t hurt to try.
Now it’s your turn.
Biker Quote for Today
Rocket bike is all her own, it’s called a Hurricane. — David Wilcox
Tags: Colorado MOST program
