Road taxes and budget are on collision course in the Legislature

By David Ammons

Associated Press

OLYMPIA — Perhaps the collision was inevitable.

In Olympia, the most complicated issues and the toughest decisions almost always are left until the last minute, the law of human nature being to avoid pain as long as possible. In this election-year session, however, the potential of an adjournment-delaying train wreck is even more pronounced because two of the toughest challenges in years are colliding:

n How to plug a $1.6 billion budget hole.

n How to find billions to patch potholes and ease some of America’s worst traffic congestion.

Legislative leaders had badly wanted to get the transportation package to the governor’s desk — or at least well along the process — before it was time to take up the budget.

That didn’t happen.

Now the two mega-issues, each involving tax and fee increases in a tax-averse era, are in play at the same time, competing for legislators’ attention and ingenuity — and voters’ forbearance.

Lawmakers, now heading into their next-to-last week of the regular session, already are whispering about the inevitability of needing overtime, despite earlier predictions of 60-days-and-out.

The twin challenges are preoccupying and vexing both houses. The House has taken the early lead on transportation, producing a package fueled by an 8-cent gas tax hike. The Senate is about to birth a new budget plan that deals with a $1.6 billion shortfall.

Legislative leaders had hoped to get the transportation issue resolved before taking up the tougher budget challenge. House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, had pledged a House vote on transportation by the third week of the session.

This is now the eighth week, the last full week of the session.

The Senate, meanwhile, has had delays of its own on the budget, primarily due to the bombshell announcement in mid-February that the budget canyon had just gotten $400 million deeper. The Senate budget rollout now is tentatively set for Tuesday, two weeks later than previously scheduled and little more than a week before adjournment.

The House, preoccupied with transportation until now, hasn’t squarely faced the issue of taxes for the general budget shortfall. And the Senate hasn’t dealt with transportation funding and will have to deal with both mega-issues this week, which already is jammed with heavy floor work.

Lawmakers say having both the budget and the gas-tax package in play simultaneously vastly complicates the endgame, and that one casualty may be the regional transportation legislation sought for the central Puget Sound region.

And some lawmakers are looking at the sales tax as a temporary fix for the general treasury’s huge deficit.

"We’re exactly where we didn’t want to find ourselves," says House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam. "We wanted to get transportation out of the way, but here we have the operating budget looming."

Lawmakers face the three potential tax votes — for the operating budget, statewide highway plan, and regional transportation — and an assortment of other fees and taxes, including a toll bridge for the Tacoma Narrows, a new $35 document fee car-buyers would pay, higher booze taxes, double-digit tuition increases and more.

The tax votes couldn’t come at a more inopportune time. Washington is deeply into its worst recession in a generation, unemployment is sky high and many businesses are in trouble.

As for taxes and fees needed to balance the budget, Senate Budget Committee chairwoman Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, says the public will accept modest increases if Gov. Gary Locke and lawmakers do a good job of explaining the need.

"I don’t think the average person knows much about the state budget, but they will listen if you explain that 70 or 80 percent of the budget problem is directly attributed to Sept. 11, that it wasn’t just an attack on New York, it was an attack on everybody. It affected us all."