Last updated November 8, 2010 5:40 p.m. PT
Voters may soon face yet another proposal to pay for state transportation projects.
One obvious speed bump: Anti-tax sentiment, expressed most recently in this month's election in which Washingtonians rejected a proposed income tax on the wealthy, eliminated new levies on soda and candy made it harder for lawmakers to raise taxes.
It's not clear when a new package of transportation taxes or tolls might be unveiled, but the subject is being talked about by business, labor, environmental groups and cities and counties who, according to one organizer, have told Olympia more investment in transit and highways is needed to help the economy.
"If we do nothing, that may not be in the state's best interest," said Tayloe Washburn, a Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce board member involved in transportation funding discussions.
Two key lawmakers predict there'll be discussion about it in next year's legislative session.
The Transportation Partnership, a group including chambers of commerce, business, union and local officials, has been meeting about every two weeks for about two months talking up the idea of another new source for road and transit improvements.
A "vision" statement circulated in late August said the group is "working for a statewide increase in revenue sources to finance transportation investments that accelerate our state's economic recovery, create jobs, address public safety issues, preserve our current assets, increase our transportation efficiency, improve our rail connectivity, and provide traffic relief and expansion of transit, bike and pedestrian mobility while reducing impacts on the environment."
The recession slowed the pace of construction and jobs and reduced the tax revenue that supports the work, "increased preservation backlogs and threatened ongoing service," the partnership's vision statement said.
A new list of projects hasn't been developed yet. But talks have included several long-standing highway proposals, including the widening of Highway 167 south to Tacoma, building a new Highway 509 segment between Sea-Tac Airport and I-5 and more improvements to Interstate 405 east of Lake Washington. Those were among several highway projects on a 2007 Puget Sound roads-and-transit ballot measure that was defeated by voters.
Environmental concerns
The idea is already raising environmental issues among Seattle officials who worry a new batch of highway projects will lead to more pollution that the state has tried in recent years to reduce.
Two Seattle officials say not enough commitment has been made to meeting the state's goals to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle driving goals, both keyed to addressing global warming.
Mayor Mike McGinn and City Councilman Mike O'Brien have suggested that Seattle withhold support from any measure that doesn't meet those standards.
"It's troubling for Seattle to be associated with something like that," O'Brien said.
The Partnership helped get legislative approval of some of the last major new transportation funding taxes: a 9-cent-per-gallon increase in the state gas tax in 2005 and a separate 5-cent-per-gallon increase in 2003, both to pay for highway improvements. It also helped defeat a 2005 initiative that would have rolled back gas tax increases approved by legislators that year.
Seattle-area voters in 1996 approved a package of sales tax increments and license fees that financed the Sound Transit bus and rail system, and in 2008 they approved paying another increment of sales tax to pay for expanding the light-rail system.
In 1999, however, state voters approved a measure calling for elimination of a motor-vehicle excise tax that supported state ferries and other projects, and the legislature complied and dropped the tax.
Ultimately the details of a new funding package will be left to state lawmakers, according to Washburn, but the meetings have featured local officials talking about their road and transit services and the lack of money to meet them.
"We're trying to help (legislators) by having meetings to help identify what the most pressing areas are," Washburn said.
Rep. Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island and chairwoman of the House Transportation Committee, said there'll be discussion of new funding in the 2011 legislative session, even if there's no action.
The state may be more interested in projects that can be paid for by users with tolls, such as 167 and 509. Clibborn said "there's a resounding disinterest in new taxes."
Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen , D-Camano Island and chairwoman of the Senate Transportation Committee said "I don't know how you put a package together without it" when asked about new transportation tax.
"There are projects all over the state, outside of King County, that need to be done and there's no money to do that," Haugen said. Examples: rebuilding Interstate 90 though the Cascades and building a new Columbia River Bridge.
Clibborn said she's interested in projects that will help create permanent jobs, ones that "stick around when the project is done" and that help people commute to work. There are varying thoughts about whether a funding package would go to voters -- or be passed by lawmakers, as previous gas tax increases were.
In late October government agencies in the area's planning agency, the Puget Sound Regional Council, agreed to join the partnership's efforts. McGinn, one Seattle representative to the council, tried beforehand to condition the move on the partnership agreeing that any new transportation package should comply with the state's goal of reducing greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020, by another 25 percent by 2035 and to half the 1990 levels by 2050.
McGinn called the lack of the commitment "a big red flag" but his attempt failed. O'Brien later told other City Council members they needed a "robust discussion" of the environmental issues because the city's plans also call for greenhouse gas reductions.
" I think we need to send a very clear statement that if folks want Seattle on board with the transportation partnership (on new funding) they cannot fail to address greenhouse gas emissions like they did with the RTID package three years ago," O'Brien said.
O'Brien and McGinn are former Sierra Club leaders who in 2007 helped defeat the roads-and-transit measure.
The light-rail expansion was approved the following year in a separate ballot measure that didn't include highway projects.
Washburn said the partnership's statement recognizes environmental considerations by calling, more generally, for a "sustainable transportation system that reduces transportation emission."
He said "this isn't a rule or law we're writing, it's a general approach we're agreeing on." Clibborn said emission reductions will be part of any proposal but if Seattle official have other concerns they're "welcome to come and talk about it."
City Councilman Tom Rasmussen, who chairs the council's Transportation Committee, said officials at the planning council session agreed the environmental goals should be added to the partnership's statement. Other officials voted to join the partnership's discussions, he said, because"it would be important to be at the table participating with them, rather than not joining, and hopefully we'll have a result that we will agree with."
The Sierra Club's political coordinator, Carrie Dolwick, said the club supports finding ways to support transit and maintain current roads and agrees a package should meet goals for reductions in greenhouse gases and vehicle miles driven. She couldn't say whether it would oppose a package that fell short on environmental goals.
Other environmentalists aren't committing themselves yet. Cliff Traisman, lobbyist for the Washington Environmental Council and Washington Conservation Voters, said there's a need for new transportation funding and "a dire need for more revenue for transit. We're in a crisis on storm water funding, which deals with saving Puget Sound."
"The issues are enormous and I would say at this point we're at the extreme early stages of talking about whether a successful coalition, including environmentalists, can be achieved. If this is a 9-inning ballgame, we're at the top of the first inning."
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