A jubilant Tim Eyman of Mukilteo scored a major legal victory Thursday when the state Supreme Court upheld Initiative 776, his bid to keep car tabs at $30.
"I feel like a 12-year-old girl who just met Ricky Martin," Eyman said. "I was screaming so loud that my kids were covering their ears."
Still, it’s not a complete victory yet.
Sound Transit plans to keep collecting a .3 percent motor vehicle excise tax in the urban centers of Snohomish, King and Pierce counties that I-776 sought to eliminate. Eyman believes the state Attorney General’s Office and a private intervener will be successful in eliminating that tax in an upcoming challenge in King County Superior Court.
For now, vehicle tabs will be $30 plus three-tenths of a percent of the vehicle’s value, which means paying an extra $30 for a $10,000 car or another $60 for a $20,000 car.
A piece of I-776 that looks like it will stick is the elimination of a $15 vehicle license fee once collected in Snohomish County and still collected in King and Pierce counties.
The Snohomish County Council voted to stop collecting the $15 fee shortly after voters approved I-776 in late 2002. That vote took away about $6 million a year that was dispersed in the county based on population.
"It’s been missed, but it wasn’t written into our budget," Snohomish County Executive Bob Drewel said. "There were things that we didn’t get to do because we didn’t have the money."
The county lost $3.8 million a year that it spent to fix roads in unincorporated communities. Everett lost about $800,000 a year, Lynnwood $287,000 and Arlington $108,000.
The loss of revenue means that county planners have seen their six-year transportation plan slashed from about $250 million to about $210 million, a loss magnified because the county had used the money to leverage for matching federal grants.
Drewel said he had hoped I-776 would be thrown out and that the $15 fee would come back, an assessment echoed by Everett City Councilman Mark Olson, who said Everett needs the money for street maintenance.
"People have told us over and over again that they want their streets maintained — they want potholes filled and the streets restriped," Olson said. "But they also said they don’t want to pay for it. We have to respect the will of the voters, but deciphering that will is sometimes a very difficult thing to do."
Olson said the $15 fee "is the best kind of tax that there is, because it’s kind of like a user tax. You’re taxing the people who use the roads, and using the money to maintain the roads."
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court overturned a King County Superior Court judge who had ruled that I-776 violated the state constitution by addressing more than one subject and impairing Sound Transit’s ability to pay off its bondholders.
In her opinion, Justice Susan Owens noted that the single-subject rule was intended to prevent the practice of "logrolling," or passing two unpopular laws by creating an impromptu coalition of their supporters.
Eyman is now working on a property tax rebate initiative for 2004 that would roll back property taxes by about 25 percent on average.
Using three different taxes, Sound Transit collects $31 million a year in Snohomish County — $23 million from sales taxes and $8 million from the Eyman-targeted excise tax.
The agency spent $106 million in the county from 1997 to 2002; it has budgeted $744 million for the county from 1997 to 2009. The money has been spent on bus service, commuter rail and capital improvement projects.
Herald reporter David Olson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.
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