Senate mends fences, passes transportation bill

Measure could allow voters to OK regional taxes

BRAD SHANNON, THE OLYMPIAN

OLYMPIA -- One day after partisan squabbles killed a vote on transportation efficiencies, the state Senate on Saturday passed the measure unanimously.

The bipartisan support carried over to a second bill that would let three traffic-choked central Puget Sound counties ask voters to raise extra taxes locally for major projects. Known formally as Second Substitute Senate Bill 6140, it passed on a 31-14 vote with four senators absent.

Both transportation measures now move to the House, and both are considered necessary before the Legislature can tackle Gov. Gary Locke's request for $8.5 billion in new, statewide transportation taxes.

The House is expected to approve and send the efficiency measure to Locke early this week.

"Now that we have taken this first step together, I believe we can take the next step and approve the new revenue needed to address our state's transportation crisis," Senate Transportation Committee Chairwoman Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, said after the votes.

"While all of Washington state has transportation concerns, no region has worse traffic congestion problems than central Puget Sound," said Sen. Dan McDonald, R-Bellevue, who had worked with House Democrat Ed Murray of Seattle to craft the regional plan.

"Most of the needed construction projects are located in our own region," McDonald said. "To pay for these important projects to reduce congestion, we need more funding than what a state gas tax increase could provide. This bill helps our region make up the difference."

"I don't really like this bill, but I'm going to vote for it," Senate Majority Leader Sid Snyder, D-Long Beach, said in a floor speech. "We've got to start moving things. We're jeopardizing the future of our state and the economy" by not approving new revenue for highways.

Under the regional tax plan, some $16 billion, including a state match, could be raised for Interstate 405 in Bellevue, the Alaskan Way viaduct in Seattle and other major central Puget Sound corridors over the next decade. But that can happen only if voters approve it, and only if a statewide tax increase is approved.

Locke has proposed an increase of 9 cents a gallon in the gasoline tax, which now runs 23 cents, along with other tax increases.

Haugen repeatedly described the regional measure as a "major policy shift" away from a shared, statewide responsibility for major highways. But she also said the local-taxation and efficiency measures were essential to approving a larger tax package to meet the state's transportation crisis.

Both the efficiencies bill, which includes some contracting out of highway engineering work and changes to wage calculations on highway jobs, and the regional bill will become "null and void" if no transportation tax package is adopted.

It was this null-and-void clause that triggered the partisan squabble Friday when Snyder was away for medical treatment. Feathers were quickly smoothed Saturday, partly because a few Republicans were absent, which left the GOP a few votes short of being able to team up with Democratic Sen. Tim Sheldon and repeal the clause.

Sheldon and South Sound's other Democrat, Sen. Karen Fraser of Thurston County, voted for the efficiencies bill but against the regional plan.

Republican Sen. Dan Swecker of Rochester voted for both measures.

The regional funding mechanism "is a giant change in how we fund statewide transportation projects," Fraser said. "Basically it shifts funding for statewide facilities such as the interstate from state transportation users as a whole to local transportation users."

Although the regional-taxation plan is designed for central Puget Sound and requires participating counties to have at least 500,000 inhabitants, Fraser argued that it would affect Thurston County and other counties across the state in the future when it comes time to expand other highways of statewide significance.

For instance, for an expansion of the Interstate 5 and U.S. Highway 101 interchange or to widen I-5, Fraser said, "It would probably not be widened or lanes added ... unless the local voters around here agreed to tax themselves for a local share of that project."

"Should we have to raise the sales tax to pay for new lanes on I-5? I don't think so," Fraser said. "Most of the traffic on I-5 is not local. That is why we traditionally have had, and I think we should continue to have, a statewide backbone transportation system that is funded by statewide transportation users. This bill goes in the opposite direction."

Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver, said both measures were needed to help restore public trust in how the state spends its tax dollars on transportation.

The battleground now shifts to the House, where the efficiency measure passed on a 51-46 vote with only one Republican joining Democrats a week ago. The regional plan faces a more uncertain fate there, because House Transportation Committee Chairwoman Ruth Fisher favors a different approach that would dedicate some of the locally raised money for city and county roads.

McDonald said Friday that it will come down to how House Speaker Frank Chopp resolves the differences between his hand-picked negotiator, Murray, and Fisher, with whom Chopp has had disagreements.

"I think it's really going to come down to Speaker Chopp, if he really wants to do this," McDonald said.

Brad Shannon, political editor for The Olympian, can be reached at 360-753-1688 or shannonbrad@hotmail.com.

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