Senate highway bill hits some potholes

By David Ammons

Associated Press

OLYMPIA — With the tougher debate over transportation taxes still ahead, lawmakers are having trouble just getting through the preliminaries — an "efficiencies" measure and regional financing for Puget Sound area projects.

The Legislature had hoped to chalk up at least one victory Friday by sending Gov. Gary Locke a package of reforms aimed at getting more bang for the buck from existing taxes.

But a Senate meltdown kept that from happening.

Majority Democrats said the efficiency changes cost money that the state can’t afford without a tax hike. Republicans said it’s foolish not to approve efficiencies regardless of the tax debate.

In the end, after hours of backroom wrangling, senators simply adjourned until today, with each party accusing the other of bad faith and partisanship.

"Not very efficient," Sen. Don Carlson, R-Vancouver, said with a chuckle after sitting through a half-day of wheel-spinning.

The day’s only sunny note was a star turn by recently retired Seattle Mariners outfielder Jay Buhner. Senators feted him with a flowery resolution and lunch and lined up for autographs.

The House, meanwhile, was waiting to concur and send the transportation efficiencies bill to the governor. Frustrated, House members adjourned for the weekend.

Presuming the legislation gets back on track, it still leaves some heavy lifting:

Regional financing. The Senate is poised to pass a plan negotiated by Sen. Dan McDonald, R-Bellevue, and Rep. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, to allow voters in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties to tax themselves for megaprojects like improvements to I-405 and the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

The tax package could include a vehicle fee of as much as $100 a year, a parking tax, a half-cent sales tax increase for roads and a half-cent for transit, tolls on new structures, a car-tab tax for transit and a new Seattle monorail system and utilization of unused local tax capacity.

The House is working on a rival plan that would allow each of the three counties to go it alone on projects and gives cities and counties a share of the multibillion-dollar revenue that local voter-approved taxes would raise. A House vote is expected next week.

Negotiators will try to craft a compromise.

Tax vote. House Speaker Frank Chopp, D-Seattle, said his caucus will unveil a statewide plan next week — the first to surface in the Legislature.

The governor has proposed $8.5 billion for state transportation projects, financed in part by a 9-cent increase in the 23-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax.

Some House leaders, including Transportation Committee chairwoman Ruth Fisher, D-Tacoma, have said it seems inevitable that voters will have the final word on taxes.

"It will go to a public vote," Fisher told a Seattle newspaper. "Reality has taken hold here."

But Senate leaders, Locke’s office and business lobbyists said Friday it’s still premature to assume a public vote. Vote counts still are under way in the House, and the Senate has a majority willing to pass the taxes in Olympia, they said.

Senate Transportation Committee chairwoman Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, said she can’t predict how it will turn out, but strongly believes lawmakers are elected to make exactly this kind of tough decision.

"I pray about this every night," she told reporters. "My feeling is the people have already voted. They voted for each one of us.

"I have never voted for a general tax increase in my life. I’m not some liberal Democrat. Do you think I would be leading the charge if I didn’t think there was a crisis?"

Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver, said regardless of what legislators prefer, the tax question will be on the ballot, referred there by the initiative process if lawmakers try to handle it in Olympia.

"Reality takes longer for some people to catch up with," he said.

Locke, in Camas to kick off the state’s newest highway interchange project, urged quick action on all of the transportation bills.

"Traffic congestion is worse than just a headache," he told a gathering of business leaders, local government officials and contractors. "It burdens not just commuters, but shippers, merchants and manufacturers."

Meanwhile, state Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald and his staff are preparing for what he calls a worst-case scenario — no new money.

Without an increase in the gas tax or some other new revenue source, the department will likely be forced to cut about 800 employees starting at the end of the year, MacDonald said.

Those workers are mostly employed in planning and design for the large projects that would be paid for by a tax increase.

Cuts in existing construction projects could come even sooner, MacDonald said, because the department is losing $100 million from the state operating budget.

Staying within the money the department has now would require axing 95 of the 463 construction projects currently planned for this biennium, he said.

For several years, the state has spent as if more highway money were on the way, MacDonald said. As a result, the state’s capacity to issue highway bonds is diminished. Combined with the drop in the state’s general revenue and other factors, that could mean $600 million less in highway construction in 2003-2005, he said.