Voters reject roads and transit, embrace red tape

Last week we voted down a multi-billion dollar proposal for roads and transit. It got me thinking back to 1968. That was the year we had a chance in King County to build rapid transit county-wide. The federal government would have matched every dollar nine-to-one. The bond issue got over 50 percent of the vote. So how come there was no mass transit? As a bond issue it needed 60 percent. What happened to the federal match? If you go to Atlanta, you can ride their fast and efficient rail system, built with money targeted for Seattle!

We have a history of rejecting ballot issues that would have resulted in a 21st century transit system. We also have a history of passing ballot measures that put the squeeze on funding already targeted to roads and transit. In 1999 we approved a measure to roll back the motor vehicle excise tax (MVET) for 80 percent of the vehicles on the road (and increase it for those cars that were over ten years old). The State Supreme Court found this initiative unconstitutional, but the Legislature passed it into statute anyway. They figured they could somehow make up the funding loss and not risk a voter backlash. It worked for a while, but when the recession hit, the back-fill funding dried up. This paved the way for a gas tax increase that recouped less than half of MVET funding. So we are still behind the eight-ball, with population growth and economic growth increasing the demands on transit.

In 2001, Initiative 747 was voted through, limiting a taxing district’s property tax increase to one percent, regardless of inflation. That’s the initiative that the State Supreme Court also found unconstitutional, just last week. Listening to Tim Eyman, the initiative sponsor, you would have thought that property taxes will skyrocket. What he didn’t say is that the law merely reverts to what it was under Referendum 47, which limits taxing districts’ property tax increases to inflation or six percent, whichever is less. This is a reasonable measure, one that the Legislature and the governor seem to have forgotten in their haste to reassure the media that they too, just like Tim Eyman, want nothing to do with taxes. The politicians are worried about the next election, not about the best policy.

Shortsighted? Undemocratic? That seems to be a recurring theme from last week’s election. Initiative I-960, will, if upheld, require a two-thirds vote of both the Senate and the House and an advisory vote of the people for any tax measure or user fee increase. So if, for example, the state needs a fee increase to pay for sno-parks because more people are using them this winter, it would first have to get a legislative super-majority and a vote of the people. If the state wanted to increase copying fees, that too would have to get a super-majority and a vote of the people. So we get more red tape and fewer public investments.

As is the case with most of Tim Eyman’s initiatives, this one is so poorly thought out that it will most likely be found unconstitutional and thrown out. But it will still have its impact, with the Legislature afraid of its own shadow when it comes to funding through increased taxes or user fees the things that we all expect from government — good state parks, good schools, good universities, good roads, good ferries.

The odd thing about these initiatives to cut funding for government is that they fall on those election years when the fewest people vote and the voting electorate is the most conservative. Initiative 695 was in 1999, Initiative 747 was in 2001, Initiative 960 was this year. So that means that even in winning, the most recent initiative received the approval of less than one quarter of registered voters.

But we are not fooled all of the time. When all the votes from last week are counted, House Joint Resolution 4204 will pass, amending the state Constitution so that a simple majority of voters can approve school levies. We citizens in Washington understand that to have a good public education system, we have to invest in it. In a democracy, that decision to invest should not be held hostage by a minority of voters.

John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute (www.eoionline.org), writes every other Wednesday. Write to him in care of the institute at 1900 Northlake Way, Suite 237, Seattle, WA 98103. His e-mail address is john@eoionline.org.