Transit bill hits roadblock

BOISE – A House panel that’s killed virtually all attempts this year to raise new taxes for public services dumped another plan Wednesday, this one to let voters raise their own sales taxes to pay for expanded public transit.

The House Revenue and Taxation Committee voted it down 11-7. It had been pushed by Boise Mayor Dave Bieter and Caldwell Mayor Garrett Nancolas as a way to slash congestion on Interstate 84 and reduce automobile air pollution.

The decision came after more than four hours of hearings over two days.

Rep. Ken Roberts, R-McCall, part of the all-GOP contingent that rejected the plan, argued it’s unfair to make residents of outlying communities, such as his in Valley County who travel to Boise to shop, pay a public-transit sales tax from which they reap little benefit. Opponents also argued Boise’s existing Valley Ride buses are often empty because people want to drive their own cars.

“Quite frankly, we have an urban sprawl issue,” Roberts said. “They (residents) want to spread out. Financially independent people want to own their own cars.”

This session, the committee has also killed a bill to lower hurdles to creating community colleges and allow voters to raise their taxes to pay for prisons and economic development.

If Wednesday’s bill hadn’t died, it would have permitted residents to add a half-cent on the dollar local sales tax, if two-thirds of voters supported the plan.

Most of those who spoke focused on the Treasure Valley, the growing area that includes Boise, Nampa and Caldwell in southwestern Idaho where cars now snarl freeways and roads that just a decade ago were just two-lane country byways.

Many here look longingly at cities like Portland and Salt Lake City, which have boosted their public transit in recent years with trains taking workers from the suburbs to centers of commerce.

Kelli Fairless, the director of Valley Ride, the transit authority in southwestern Idaho that serves between 900,000 and 1 million riders annually, was hoping for passage. She wanted to ask voters in Ada and Canyon counties in 2008 to support a $29 million, six-year plan to provide high-speed mass-transit lanes, expand the bus system, secure right of way and explore the possibility of commuter rail.

“We’ll go back to looking at the postgame wrap-up to figure out what things we’ve heard and what things that we can now do to address this issue,” Fairless told the Associated Press after the vote.

Though some suggested boosting car registration fees, not the sales tax, was a more appropriate way to pay for mass transit, Fairless said her group discarded the option. It would have required a change to Idaho’s Constitution and would have put mass transit in competition with the Idaho Department of Transportation, she said.

Two Republicans, Rep. Dennis Lake, R-Blackfoot, and Rep. Leon Smith, joined the committee’s five Democrats in voting for the bill.

Still, the majority remained unconvinced that boosting public transit will bring about the desired reductions in congestion in the Treasure Valley.

For instance, Rep. Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, said even Salt Lake City’s popular TRAX light rail has only made moderate inroads on traffic volumes on the Utah capital’s freeway.

“It was very successful, yet it only took one lane off,” Bedke said.