As the clock ticks down towards the March 14 wind-up of this year’s legislative session, the House and Senate are staring each other down on the transportation package.
While there are significant substantive differences between the two packages, the killer issue seems to be whether to pass a package in Olympia, as the Senate wants to do, or send it to the voters, as the House wants.
A quick-and-dirty survey of a few Kitsap County residents done by one of this newspaper group’s reporters yielded a number of different opinions, but showed conclusively why the Legislature needs to screw up its courage and do the job itself – too many folks base their opinions on bad data.
One respondent from South Kitsap said she’d vote for an increased gas tax, but only if the money raised in Kistsap County was spent here, rather than going to King, Pierce and Snohomish counties
But the fact of the matter is, Kitsap County has long received significantly more dollars in state highway spending than it has contributed through taxes, while King, Pierce and Snohomish have received substantially less than they have given. Traffic congestion in metro Seattle is a detriment to the entire region’s economy, so both fairness and self-interest suggest that it’s time to send some money eastward.
A Poulsbo respondent labelled a plan to increase the gas tax “ridiculous,” saying that Washington already has the second-highest gas tax in the country. Not even close. Our 23-cent-per gallon tax is no better than eleventh – and remember always, Washington is one of only a handful of states with no income tax.
The that those folks are incompletely informed does not make them “stupid.” They are, no doubt, experts at what they do, but they are not experts on the intricacies of tax policy.
None of us is an expert in everything. When we encounter a problem outside our area of expertise, we hire somebody else. And when it comes to raising tax dollars for public needs, the experts we have hired are our legislators. They simply owe it to us to do the job we hired them to perform.
We have heard the concerns of the House Democrats who want a popular vote.. If they pass a tax-increase on a party-line vote, Republicans will use that against them. And initiative-meister Tim Eyman has promised to force a vote on any transportation taxes. SinceEyman always wins and the public will vote anyway, they argue, why not have them do it up-front.
We don’t find either argument persuasive. Republicans will criticize Democrats no matter what. With a transportation package in hand, the Democrats could at least retort that they have addressed the problem, setting themselves apart from the Republicans, who seem somehow to think that “just saying no” is viable policy.
As for the other issue, why not strike when the Eyman is cold? With the Mukilteo watch salesman benched by his own team for lying about not making money from his initiative mill, there’s a real question about whether the anti-tax forces can be as effective as in past years.
After years of paralysis brought about by an evenly divided House, one party – the Democrats – finally has a majority. Rather than worry about how thin it is, they ought to take a lesson from President Bush, who has acted as though he had a mandate despite actually losing the popular vote.
The transportation crisis is real, and the Democrats have the votes to begin fixing it in Olympia. If they don’t have the moxie to do that, there’s no reason for them to have a majority.
