WA lawmakers agree on the need for roadwork — not how to pay for it

Broken roads, old ferries and devastation left by December’s storms are top of mind for the Democratic and Republican leaders on the Legislature’s transportation committees.

That’s where the agreement ends.

Washington state legislators see a tough couple of months ahead for transportation spending. The short session begins Monday and won’t see massive changes to policy. Lawmakers have just 60 days to tweak the $15.5 billion transportation budget agreed to during last year’s 105-day session. In the meantime, roads continue to deteriorate, and the cost of the state’s megaprojects continues to rise, as does the plan to electrify the ferry system.

Looming over it all is the deferred work to preserve and maintain the state’s tens of thousands of miles of road and thousands of bridges, which both sides of the aisle agree is the priority this year. State transportation officials warned in October there wasn’t enough money to keep up with needs, saying the state was in the early stages of critical failure due to lack of funding.”

Democrats, who hold strong majorities in the Senate and House, are generally following Gov. Bob Ferguson’s lead on the matter. He proposed borrowing $2 billion to fill the hole for roadwork, and an additional $1 billion to buy new hybrid-electric ferries.

State Sen. Marko Liias, D-Edmonds, chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, was sanguine about funding the work, saying last year’s 6-cent gas tax increase helped shore up the state’s finances.

“We’re going to be focused more on, how do we start to invest some of these resources, particularly into preservation and maintenance?” Liias said. “It’s not as doom and gloom as it was a year ago.”

Republicans, whose support would be needed to approve Ferguson’s bond proposal but not necessarily the budget, say the state has plenty of revenue and doesn’t need to borrow. However, funds from the gas tax and vehicle license fees, they say, have been needlessly spent on pet projects by the party in power, like ferry electrification, transit and bike lanes.

“We have the money,” said state Rep. Andrew Barkis, R-Olympia, ranking Republican on the House Transportation Committee. “We should use those resources before we go further into debt.”

Perhaps speaking for the four heads of the Legislature’s transportation committees, Barkis said the session won’t be a “battle, but it will definitely be a challenge” as lawmakers try to find areas of agreement.

“We’ll have to hustle,” he said. “We get to work right away on Monday.”

Roadwork

At the October meeting of the Washington State Transportation Commission, Troy Suing, director of capital program development and management for the Washington State Department of Transportation, said 40% of the state’s road miles, about 7,900, needed paving in 2024. Only 670 miles got paved. What’s more, 10% of the state’s 3,427 bridges are more than 80 years old and at risk of failure.

To remedy the situation, WSDOT officials requested $1.6 billion for maintenance work in last year’s 2025-27 budget. They got $900 million.

Following former WSDOT head Roger Millar’s warning in 2023 that the state transportation system was on a “glidepath to failure,” according to the Washington State Standard, lawmakers appear to be listening this year.

“We must find some money, more money, for maintenance and preservation in 2026,” said state Sen. Curtis King, R-Yakima, the top Republican on the Senate Transportation Committee. “It can’t be a minimal amount. We’ve been doing minimal amounts for far too long.”

King joined Liias in supporting a 6-cent gas tax increase last year, bringing the total to 55.4 cents per gallon, but he’s skeptical of Ferguson’s approach. “When you borrow money, you’re paying money,” King said. “There was a reluctance to do any bonding last session. I don’t think that reluctance has gone away.”

King has some support in that view from state Rep. Jake Fey, D-Tacoma, who leads the House Transportation Committee.

“We didn’t even hear it in the House,” he said of a Senate proposal last year to bond for transportation projects. “We didn’t think it was prudent to begin borrowing for anything until we had a more reasonable spending plan.”

This year, Fey said, even if Republicans got behind Ferguson’s plan, the state treasurer wouldn’t approve a bond to pay for roadwork because the debt would last longer than the pavement it paid for.

“I’m not saying ‘Hell no,’” he said. “But to bond … you need Republicans.”

Ferries

Less agreement can be found on the state’s troubled ferry system.

Washington State Ferries has been working for years to rebuild an aging, depleted fleet, which has hundreds of millions of dollars in deferred maintenance.

The ultimate goal is to completely electrify and modernize the fleet by 2040, a $6.2 billion endeavor. In his supplemental budget request, Ferguson proposed $1 billion to build three new boats beyond the contract agreed to last year with Eastern Shipbuilding Group of Panama City, Fla., to build three hybrid-electric ferries, and $150 million dedicated to maintenance.

Liias said he hasn’t fully examined Ferguson’s proposal, but said buying more boats should get “underway as soon as possible” and hoped to open up a new bidding process to local shipbuilders.

Fey, on the other hand, questioned Ferguson’s idea, saying a short session usually devoted to budget amendments isn’t the time for big spending plans. More surprisingly, Fey said he was open to a long-held Republican demand to buy diesel ferries.

“Collectively, we need to look at: What is the benefit? What are the carbon savings with traditional propulsion systems that are fueled by oil?” Fey said. “That should be a conversation. We shouldn’t be afraid of taking a look at things.”

State law would have to change for that to happen, and Liias said it’s a nonstarter. But King and Barkis are on board.

“It has failed. It has absolutely failed,” Barkis said of the electrification effort, arguing that “clean diesel” ferries emit 50%-60% fewer emissions.

King agreed. “If we had used some reasonableness and built some diesel engine ferries, we’d have them now.”

After the storm

The schism on ferries cuts along environmental lines, and it becomes more pronounced when discussing the Republican proposal to use funds generated by the state’s Climate Commitment Act.

Since 2023, the program has raised $4.3 billion from some of the state’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases but has not been nearly as effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions as state officials said it would, cutting emissions by less than 4% of what was originally estimated.

Democrats have long said the money brought in by the act can only be used for projects that lower emissions, but in his operating budget proposal, Ferguson proposed redirecting $559 million from the climate account toward working family tax credits — a move criticized by Republicans and former Gov. Jay Inslee, a Ferguson ally.

Republicans are calling foul and say the money should be used to help clean up after the extreme December storms, which many blame on climate change.

“If they can use it for (tax credits), why can’t we use it for something like this?” Barkis said.

King said the CCA money should not just be a fund for environmentalists and their preferred Democratic politicians.

“I think there are those who don’t want to take their foot off the brake,” he said. “They got the CCA money where they want it, and they don’t want to change.”

The question of redirecting the money to transportation work gets one answer from Democrats: No.

Liias framed it as a philosophical disagreement on climate change and the use of state funds.

“Sen. King and I have never seen eye to eye on that,” he said, adding that he and King work well together and try hard to find bipartisan solutions. “If there’s extra CCA funding, I would like to buy more hybrid ferries and incentivize the shift to zero-emission vehicles. These are things that will help us reduce our emissions.”

Fey also wasn’t interested in the idea.

He noted that the act’s language prohibits its use on roadwork. Beyond that, he didn’t want lawmakers to be hypocrites.

“I have a problem when the Legislature says the money will be used for certain things, and then it changes,” he said. CCA money “needs to be used wisely on things that reduce emissions.