Word: optionally
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Last Tuesday, the Massachusetts State Senate held a hearing on a proposed bill which would permit local municipalities to set aside preferred parking spaces for eco-friendly vehicles. Under the bill, local cities and towns would have the option of creating spots specifically for low-to-zero emissions vehicles like hybrids...
...office of Chang-Diaz said that this bill would not lead to a state-wide mandate for preferred parking spaces. Rather, it would provide city and town municipalities the option of creating preferred parking spaces if they see the need. Costs for implementing the program would fall to the municipality setting them...
...bill is on the Senate floor, it will be very difficult for anyone to make any significant changes, unless they can muster 60 votes for them. Although there will be a number of skirmishes - over abortion funding, illegal immigrants' access to the new insurance marketplace, a government-run public option and whether to help pay for the whole enterprise by raising taxes on the rich or taxing high-end, so-called Cadillac insurance plans, just to name a few - everyone knows that the real test will be the moment, weeks from now, when Reid attempts to shut down debate...
...real fights - including those over provisions in the bill like a government-run public option and its language allowing abortion coverage if it is paid for by private funds - are not likely to come until some time in December. Then, if it passes the Senate, it will move into a conference committee with the House, where the two chambers will hash out some significant differences over abortion (the House bill has far more restrictive language than the version now before the Senate), the public option (the House version is almost certain to be more robust...
President Barack Obama is about to announce his new strategy for Afghanistan, but the success of whatever option he chooses will depend heavily on Pakistan acting to stop its territory being used to attack Western forces next door. And that's bad news, because the demands of its own domestic counterinsurgency campaign, doubts about the duration of U.S. commitment in Afghanistan and looming political instability in Islamabad have left Pakistan in no hurry to help...