The bill does have teeth. Ch. 79A.60 RCW (Regulation of Recreational Vessels) says that:
Failure to possess a boater education card required by this section is an infraction under chapter 7.84 RCW. The penalty shall be waived if the boater provides proof to the court within sixty days that he or she has received a boater education card.
RCW 79A.60.640(5).
An "infraction" is a civil violation, not a crime. RCW 7.84.020. The boater education card requirement is an "unscheduled" infraction, meaning the Washington State Supreme Court has not yet selected the amount of the fine.
See RCW 7.84.100 (Court to set amount of fine); IRLJ 6.2(d) (list of scheduled infractions, which doesn't include boater education). As an unscheduled infraction, the fine amount is set at $48, unless local courts set a different amount. IRLJ 6.2(b).
As for enforcement, every law enforcement officer in the state is empowered to stop any boater on the water to enforce the requirements of the recreational vessel regulation chapter, including the boater education card requirement. RCW 79A.60.100.
The recreational vessel regulation chapter is silent as to the degree of suspicion the officer must have prior to making a stop—an important consideration under the 4th Amendment and Washington Constitution Art. 1, § 7. Does the officer need a warrant? Probable cause? Reasonable suspicion? No suspicion at all? The chapter doesn't say, and Washington courts have never ruled on the issue of whether individualized suspicion is required to board a vessel under the recreational vessel regulations.
Other states have upheld upheld statutes that allow law enforcement to randomly board vessels without probable cause or reasonable suspicion. Such laws have been upheld as reasonable because the legitimate state interest in promoting water safety, in addition to the diminished privacy expectations of a person on a vessel, justify searches without probable cause.
Here is an article in the Spokesman-Review in which the sheriff of Whitman County, Washington describes stopping recreational boats on the water without individualized suspicion. So regardless of whether the courts think no-suspicion boat stops are constitutional, the cops do. (And the examples from other states indicate the cops are probably correct.) The Spokesman-Review article is accompanied by a description and photograph showing a sheriff in Idaho stopping kayakers on the water, and quoting the Idaho sheriff as issuing citations for boater safety violations (though it is not clear how many of those boaters were kayakers).
So the long and the short of it is, this bill will empower police, at least in their own minds, to stop kayakers on the water and demand to see our boater education cards, even we are not doing anything wrong. If we don't have the card, it's a $48 fine. I won't mind the fine so much, but I will resent the intrusion of the stop and the interrogation. I vote "no."
Alex