I-912 would undo higher gas tax

OLYMPIA – Meriam Kayser opened her Spokane mailbox last week and discovered a flier urging her to vote against I-912, a voter veto of a 9.5-cent state gas tax increase.

She examined the brochure, with its map touting the projects the new tax would pay for.

“Boy, we on this side of the state have a pretty small amount of stars over here,” said Kayser, 88. “It seems like they’re all grouped over there on the coast.”

That perception – that the central Puget Sound region siphons most of the state’s transportation dollars – is a big hurdle for the folks fighting for the initiative.

According to the state Department of Transportation, for every $1 of the new transportation tax collected in the Puget Sound area, that region will get back $1.34 in transportation projects. The rest of the state will get back just 65 cents on the dollar.

“I’ve never said that people in other parts of the state don’t have a responsibility for the state’s transportation system, but this is a terrible deal for anyone except in Seattle,” said Brett Bader, a spokesman for I-912.

Defenders of the gas tax counter with four arguments:

•The money has long gone east. For decades, a recent study by the Department of Transportation’s Strategic Planning and Programming office found, many rural Eastern Washington counties got much more money back in roadwork than they collected in transportation taxes.

From 1984 through 2003, for example, residents in Tacoma and the rest of Pierce County saw just 76 cents in projects for each tax dollar they paid. About $650 million of their local tax dollars went elsewhere.

The money went to places such as rural Lincoln and Garfield counties. Both got back more than $4 for every dollar. In Ferry County, it was more than $5.

“We had the three largest counties paying transportation welfare for the rest of the state,” said Rep. Ed Murray, D-Seattle.

One exception to this trend, however, was Spokane County. In those same 20 years, Spokane County got back just 74 cents on the dollar. If I-912 fails and the new gas tax remains in effect, the recent study says, the county’s share of locally collected transportation dollars will fall to 66 cents. (Future state transportation grants, not counted in the study, might raise that percentage.)

•The system doesn’t stop at the county line. Gas tax proponents say it’s absurd to look at road spending county by county, because roads are a network.

Eastern Washington wine and crops must get to Seattle and Tacoma ports, they say. Goods and people must be able to move throughout the state. And if central Puget Sound grinds to a halt amid ruined bridges and toppled freeways, they say, Eastern Washington will very quickly feel that pain.

•It’s an emergency. Over the past decade, seismic experts have concluded that another earthquake is virtually certain in the Puget Sound region within 50 years, and there’s no way to tell if it’s decades or days away. If that happens, state engineers say there’s a good chance that Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct and parts of the nearby 520 floating bridge – both decades old – will collapse.

“If a quake hits at rush hour and (the Viaduct) pancakes, hundreds of people could be killed instantly,” said Rep. Alex Wood, D-Spokane. “You’ve got to go where the problems are, and those are two huge problems.”

•The new tax will pay for improvements in virtually every county. If I-912 vetoes the new tax, it will also veto the $152 million slated to buy land and design miles of the North Spokane Corridor project. Another $8 million for bridge replacements in Whitman County would evaporate, as would $400,000 for new lighting on State Route 17 in Adams County.

“It’s not just central Puget Sound,” Rep. Murray said. “This helps Spokane.”

He and other lawmakers also warn that Eastern Washingtonians should be careful what they wish for. If the gas tax is vetoed, they say, lawmakers from the densely populated Puget Sound area might vote to keep their tax money for their local projects. The last gas tax increase, 2003’s “Nickel Package,” has Puget Sound contributing about $400 million in local tax dollars to projects throughout the rest of the state.

“There are enough legislators in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties that if they decided they wanted to go after the basic resources of the state, they probably have the political horsepower to do that,” said Sen. Dan Swecker, R-Rochester. “If they decide to pull their own money back into Puget Sound, we’d all be left hanging.”

Some liberal online bloggers have floated the idea of an initiative to do just that. A recent poll by independent pollster Stuart Elway found strong support for such a measure on both sides of the Cascades.

If that happened, all sides predict, rural counties would be hard-pressed to maintain their roads.

“Who’s going to be responsible for (Snoqualmie) Pass?” said Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island. “Last time I looked, there wasn’t anyone living up there.”

Local lawmakers say they’re skeptical of such a split.

“Legislative leadership just is not willing to go down that road,” said Wood. “It would fracture the state too much.”

Sen. Mark Schoesler scoffed.

“That’s bluster, this nuclear option that they have,” said Schoesler, R-Ritzville. “Do they want to drive on gravel roads when they come over Snoqualmie Pass to recreate?”

If the initiative passes, he said, Senate Republicans are likely to quickly propose a “more realistic” plan.

“We understand there’s a need for projects, but we’ve got to have some common sense,” Schoesler said. “They have to get realistic. Nine and a half cents, when people are hurting this bad?’