Every Which Way But Right On
True to advance billing, the collision over transportation funding turned out to be the No. 1 political show here this winter - and the final act won’t be played out till November.
Transportation politics, usually resolved in Olympia without much fuss or partisanship, will have unusually high visibility this fall, when voters will be asked to consider a GOP highway plan and a conflicting citizen initiative to eliminate the car tax - along with re-election bids from many lawmakers.
The coming showdown will frame the partisan fight for control of the Legislature. Potholes, tax policy and bragging rights - it’s all there.
It appears voters will face four choices:
Pass the Republicans’ $2.4 billion funding package. The measure, sent to the ballot Friday on party line votes, would mean a large bond debt but also a tax cut on the love-to-hate license tabs that cost many of us hundreds of dollars each year. And it would mean a big down payment on addressing some of the state’s serious transportation problems. Backers also pledge to search for a long-term funding solution.
Pass a proposed citizen initiative to phase out the car tax completely. That would mean big savings for the motorists - but gut funding for the GOP proposal to fix roads. Backers do not yet have enough signatures to ensure this proposal a place on the ballot but are expected to get them.
Pass both. This would have the effect of eliminating the car tax, killing the GOP plan and sending lawmakers scrambling to fill a $1.7 billion budget hole and come up with a new way of financing transportation, possibly with a higher, indexed gasoline tax. The GOP transportation bill relies heavily on car tax money for highway and ferry construction.
Pass neither. This option, backed by Gov. Gary Locke and legislative Democrats, is considered least likely and would send legislators back to the drawing boards for highway funding.
Election year politics and deeply embedded notions about taxes have pitted the two parties in a duel that promises to carry on into the fall campaigns. Democrat Locke’s prestige is on the line, as is the report card for majority Republicans who run the Legislature.
My way or …
In a town where compromise, common ground and conciliation are required for virtually every major piece of legislation, transportation has been a different breed of cat. This year, the issue was rigidly partisan - “my way or the highway.”
Both sides agree on the severity of Washington’s transportation woes - both the slow economic strangulation of the Puget Sound corridor and farm-to-market routes, and the traffic snarls that lead to frayed tempers and even “road rage” in our laid-back Northwest.
The Wall Street Journal recently noted that the Puget Sound region is creating jobs faster than anywhere but Phoenix, but is “starting to grind to a halt. … Traffic here is a nightmare in every direction and congestion is worsening, delaying commutes and delivery of everything from apples to airplane parts.”
Both sides even agree on the price tag of a five-year fix: $2.4 billion, much of it from the sale of state bonds.
But they disagreed, vehemently, over how to get there. Both sides dug in - ironically so, since for years the chore of financing highway projects has been handled without the partisan shots and recriminations we’re seeing this time around.
Republicans pronounced the governor’s plan dead on arrival. And not a single Democrat was willing to vote for the GOP proposal.
Background for the standoff: The tax revolt of the early ‘90s, embraced by the Republicans as their ticket to power, has steeled their resolve against jacking up the gasoline tax, that trusty old source of revenue. Democrats, trying to take the high road, find themselves in the politically touchy position of advocating a tax increase.
Republicans poked fun at the tax-and-spend Democrats and the Democrats poked fun at the Republicans’ knee-jerk position on taxes, saying their transportation plan would do the job without hurting schools and other mom-and-apple-pie state services.
You get the picture.
The problem … and the context
For years, legislators would simply plan on boosting the gasoline tax every decade or so, dutifully complaining that a “long-term” solution is needed so rates don’t have to be increased repeatedly.
The last increase, a two-step, seven-cent increase, was approved eight years ago. That brought our tax to 23 cents a gallon.
The gas tax never keeps up with the growing highway needs because it doesn’t grow with inflation. And it gets eaten up by the galloping costs of building and maintaining a massive highway system and the country’s largest ferry system. The 1990 increase, for instance, has evaporated, particularly with the fuel efficiency of newer vehicles.
In 1993, voters approved Initiative 601, which makes it next to impossible to raise taxes. I-601 doesn’t mention transportation, which is handled in a separate budget from the rest of government with its own revenues, but lawmakers have never made a distinction.
The “Republican revolution” gave fiscal conservatives control of the state House in 1994 and, two years later, the entire Legislature. They’ve been cutting taxes and most GOP lawmakers have treated the gasoline tax as an abomination.
The issue, said Senate Majority Leader Dan McDonald, was how legislators could possibly explain cutting taxes for general government while raising them for transportation.
Compounding the I-can’t-explain-it-to-the-voters argument: Thanks to a buoyant economy and the spending caps of I-601, the state has built up a projected surplus of over $800 million.
“Why in the heck would we raise taxes if we don’t have to, with us sitting here with $860 million in the bank?” McDonald asks.
Majority Republicans, anxiously reading polls that show transportation to be a huge issue with the voters, know they’ll lose in the suburbs if they are painted as asleep at the switch on this problem.
So they transformed the issue into their premier cause for the year and devised a plan that would allow them to turn it into an object lesson on How Conservatives Can Fix Problems Without Resorting to Taxes.
The plan … and the problem
The Republicans’ proposal is complicated and requires changes in I-601 and a public vote. It involves greater transportation use of car tab money that now flows into the general state treasury. It would transfer millions from the General Fund, which has a surplus, to the highway fund, which has estimated needs of $58 billion.
As a sweetener, the package also would cut the annual car tax by about $30 per vehicle - about a $360 million tax cut every two years.
But Locke, most Democrats and even a handful of moderate Republicans say the plan is squishy and could “pit schools against roads” in coming years.
Locke’s original plan called for an assortment of revenue sources, most notably a big increase in the gas tax, about 11 cents over the next five years. He later scaled back his plan to $700 million, with a smaller car-tax cut and no gas tax increase - basically, GOP Lite.
Republicans nearly died laughing over his first plan and ignored the fall-back proposal. Legislative Democrats, feeling out of the loop, sat on the sidelines, offering no plan but plenty of potshots. There’s bad blood in Olympia these days.
The enemy of my enemy …
About the only area of agreement is common opposition to Initiative 691, which would roll back half the car tax in 1999 and the rest of it in 2000.
Sen. Jim Horn, R-Mercer Island, one of two holdouts who held up the GOP plan for weeks, said the filing of the initiative melted his opposition. Although he would have preferred a different highway plan, the initiative goes way too far and would leave the state with no plan to address the transportation woes in Pugetropolis, he figured.
Horn says the initiative would save a motorist over $400 a year on a $20,000 vehicle. “That is a powerful argument, unless we can offer voters a responsible alternative” that offers a smaller cut, but major help for traffic congestion.
“The political climate has changed,” Horn said. “The voters need a credible alternative.”
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