OLYMPIA — A transportation budget proposal that includes a 2.5 percent ferry rate hike was approved Friday by the Washington Legislature.
The bipartisan $8.9 billion budget for the 2011-2013 biennium includes $5.9 billion in capital projects. The compromise budget does not include $4 million
in ferry service cuts, as originally proposed, but lawmakers hope to recover that money by passing a bill to increase certain driver’s license and vehicle fees.
The Senate approved the budget 39-9 Wednesday, and the House concurred in the Senate amendments 87-9 Friday to send it to Gov. Chris Gregoire’s desk.
The bill on the license and vehicle fee increases has not yet reached the House floor. Since it’s necessary to implement the transportation budget, it stays alive into special session, which starts next week.
If the bill doesn’t pass, the transportation budget would automatically restore the $4 million in service cuts to retain those savings.
Budget writers lauded their colleagues for maintaining broad bipartisan support. They say their proposal is a bridge to keep transportation projects going for the next two years, rather than a long-term solution, but that it still creates about 30,000 jobs.
“This was not an easy budget to write,” Rep. Mike Armstrong, the House Transportation committee’s ranking Republican, said Friday. “This is a bare-bones, tighten-your-belt kind of budget.”
He added that they would have liked to spread more money out to projects across the state, but “we didn’t have any money.”
House Transportation committee chairwoman Rep. Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island, said the final product was a “responsible budget” that lawmakers could all be “very proud of.”
But her Senate counterpart, Transportation Committee Chairwoman Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, was not pleased by a last-minute House maneuver that left out a bill to raise money for a new ferry.
That bill, SB5742, would have included a 25-cent vessel capital surcharge on one-way fares to help finance a new 144-car ferry. It also would have eliminated the Marine Employees Commission and transferred its duties to the Public Employee Relations Commission.
PERC already handles all grievance claims and labor relations issues for most of the state’s public employees, so lawmakers hoped to bring ferry employees under that umbrella.
“This is a budget buster. There’s no money in the budget for MEC. If the House insists on its position, there will have to be cuts in the ferry budget,” Haugen said Friday. “I’m very disappointed to see the House back away from an agreement to reform our ferry system.”
The compromise budget had assumed passage of the MEC bill, which could resurface during the special session. If it does not, budget writers will have to scramble to make up for the savings and revenue assumed in the overall transportation budget.
Ferries have been a focal point of the transportation budget this year, with Gregoire proposing an overhaul of the state system to a regionally operated one in which counties that use ferries would manage it.
Washington’s ferry system is the largest in the country, with more than 22 million riders annually.
Bills necessary to implement the transportation budget will be addressed in the special session, along with the still-unresolved operating budget and capital budget proposals from the House and Senate.
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