By Rachel La Corte
Associated Press
OLYMPIA — House Democrats on Monday released their take on a transportation revenue package, a version that looks similar to the Senate’s $15 billion 16-year plan that includes an incremental gas tax increase of nearly 12-cents a gallon.
House Transportation Chairwoman Judy Clibborn said that her committee would pass it tonight. Negotiations with the Senate will begin soon after on areas where the two plans differ, she said.
One of main areas of contention — included in the Senate plan but not the House plan — is a bill to exempt all state highway projects from the state sales tax and would redirect sales tax money from non-highway transportation projects away from the state general fund.
Clibborn said that as lawmakers continue to work to respond to a Supreme Court order mandate on education funding, the idea of diverting tax dollars for transportation makes their job even more difficult.
“This is terrible timing to take sales tax out of a budget when we’re dying for education dollars,” she said.
Instead, she said, the House plan relies in part on what is called “practical design” — basically looking for ways to design projects in a cheaper way that they estimate will save the state hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming years.
The House plan, like the Senate plan, does not incorporate elements of Gov. Jay Inslee’s climate-based proposal, which would have charged polluters under a cap-and-trade program to pay for transportation projects.
But it also doesn’t include a Senate proposal that connects any plan on a potential low carbon fuel standard to funding for transit projects.
The low carbon fuel standard, which is being considered by Inslee, would require cleaner fuels over time.
If that standard is ultimately adopted, under the Senate plan, all non-bondable revenues — such as fee-based money going toward transit and bike paths — would instead be moved into the main transportation account, something that Democrats have decried.
“It is really a separate issue that the Legislature will work out,” said Rep. Jake Fey, a Democrat from Tacoma who is vice chair of the transportation committee.
“But it shouldn’t get in the way of getting a transportation package done.”
The Senate passed its plan off the chamber floor last month.
As in the Senate, the House would include an incremental gas tax increase of 11.7 cents over the next three years.
The gas tax would increase in three stages: a 5-cent increase would take effect this summer, a 4.2-cent increase would follow next year, and then a final 2.5-cent increase would take effect the following year.
The House plan looks to spend about the same amount as the Senate — $8.3 billion — on various highway projects across the state.
Lawmakers have struggled the past few years to reach agreement on a transportation package, but Clibborn thinks lawmakers would go into special session to address it if needed.
“I feel like we have more momentum now than we’ve ever had,” Clibborn said, noting that when lawmakers adjourned in previous years without a plan, they heard about people’s frustrations when they went home to their districts.
“People wanted this investment and they didn’t understand why we couldn’t get there,” she said.
“And they didn’t like either of us for not coming together.”