Protesters Denounce ‘Toll Trolls’ State Officials Criticized For $2.5 Billion In Toll Roads

Angry commuters urged lawmakers Thursday to throw up a roadblock to the state’s tentative plan to authorize $2.5 billion worth of toll roads, bridges and other highway projects.

Several hundreds demonstrators, many making their first trip to the Legislature, staged a protest on the Capitol steps, shouting “No tolls!” and denouncing Gov. Mike Lowry, state Transportation Secretary Sid Morrison and others they called “The Toll Trolls.”

The commuters and business people are up in arms over six projects that have been given a tentative green light by the state. They include toll roads, bridges, park-and-ride-lots and “congestion pricing” so singleoccupancy vehicles can use carpool lanes.

All are in the Puget Sound metro area. None has begun the local zoning process.

Washington never has had public toll roads and only a few toll bridges. Under the new “public-private partnership” law, the projects would be built with private money. Investment and profit would be recouped by pocketing the tolls.

Angry speakers, including legislators from both houses and both parties, said if the projects aren’t stopped, or at least put to a public vote, the toll concept will eventually expand.

“It’s a cancer that will spread itself to every road in the state,” said organizer Chris Clifford, Renton, an environmental consultant, Seattle sports bar owner and former state Senate staffer. “If you give one inch, I guarantee you we will be paying tolls for the next 50 years.”

Lawmakers have introduced two options for changing the law: Require a public vote in the affected areas, or scrap the program altogether. Organizers and lawmakers predict that, at the very least, a mandatory-vote bill will pass this session.

Morrison said in an interview he’ll propose yet another option: A requirement for public involvement in projects before developers get a goahead.

A public vote would be problematic, Morrison said, because state attorneys say it would have to be a statewide vote, since the projects are of statewide significance and would become state property.

Morrison is standing by the underlying program, which was created by the Legislature as a way to attack traffic congestion and highway safety without using public money.

Sen. Kathleen Drew, D-Issaquah, has sponsored a bill to eliminate the whole program, saying the Department of Transportation hasn’t shown it can implement it without running roughshod over the public. Sens. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, and Kevin Quigley, D-Lake Stevens, have different versions of a mandatory-vote bill.

“This toll scam will create a twotier system of citizens in this state,” those that are allowed to vote on transportation improvement, as in the King, Snohomish and Pierce counties’ mass-transit plan, and those who have no voice, Roach said.

“Tolls are a tax” and should not be imposed without a public vote, she said.

“The people of the community are being betrayed by the state of Washington,” Drew told the crowd. Later, at a Senate Transportation Committee hearing on the issue, she said: “I do not vote for legislation and advocate for its repeal lightly. … I feel like the person in the tale who has to say ‘The emperor has no clothes.”’

Both Lowry and Morrison came in for razzing. The governor has only indirect control over the project, since the department is run by a director who answers to an independent citizen commission.