A quick note to Gov. Inslee: If our Snohomish County legislators are not willing to vote for the taxes to fund the road projects that they support I must point out that this at least represents an improvement in attitude. (Sunday article, “Inslee to area lawmakers: Step up for transportation package.”)
A decade ago this paper published state plans to use the first round of the nine-cent gas tax to rebuild the 172nd Street and I-5 interchange at Smokey Point so that it would not have to be worked on again for 20 years. Then state Sen. Val Stevens called the design a “Taj Mahal” and said not to bother. Since then, local agencies have funded a continuing rebuild, so now the interchange is a confusing spaghetti of concrete that took longer, cost more and does less than the original plan.
If our legislators now actually want to spend state money, that is an improvement. At least we are not like Vancouver, which last year walked away from a half-billion dollars in federal funding for a much needed new bridge over the Columbia. Their final excuse (among many) was that the trains that would use the bridge to connect Vancouver and downtown Portland were socialist. I am not sure this is any better than calling a well-designed roadway a “Taj Mahal.” Perhaps some of the business people the conservative wing of the Legislature claims to represent can give them a few lessons in common-sense business practices. In the meantime, good luck to the governor in getting something — anything — accomplished this year.
Michael Furr
Marysville
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