Key players on transportation issue: State Sen. Curtis King, R-Yakima, co-chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, and state Rep. Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island, chairwoman of the House Transportation Committee.
OLYMPIA, Nov. 15.—Curtis King and Judy Clibborn, the transportation leads who hold the cards on the trickiest issue before the Legislature at this particular moment, say they are close to a deal – but the chance of a special session by the Apple Cup looks pretty dim.
O.K., so what about the Holiday Bowl? That’s one idea Clibborn, D-Mercer Island, is floating right now – a special session that might be held sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. “We’re closer than we’ve ever been,” says the House Transportation Committee chairwoman. “I think we could get it written in time.”
So much for the challenge lobbed by Gov. Jay Inslee two months ago, who apparently hoped to attend the Nov. 29 football game between the University of Washington and Washington State University without worrying about gas taxes and road projects and proposals to reshape the way the Department of Transportation does business. Right now the chance of a special session on transportation next week looks mighty dim, say the two chairs – and in political-speak, you can read that as a no-go.
Big issues remain to be settled, and some legislative players might sense political and tactical reasons to hold the matter over for the regular 2014 legislative session, which begins in January. But all that aside, it has now become a simple matter of deadlines – even if lawmakers were to reach an agreement today, they would not be able to get the bills ready by next Thursday, when the Gang of 147 is scheduled to return to Olympia for two days of committee hearings.
“It doesn’t mean we can’t get started,” says Curtis King, R-Yakima, co-chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. “But I don’t think there is a way that we can get it completed in that timeframe.”
Whether the idea of a holiday season get-together at the Capitol fills anyone with cheer, it is an idea Clibborn will present today as lawmakers meet with the governor to report on their progress. Lawmakers have made come a considerable distance in the last week, as the Senate has finally advanced a proposal that raises the House by a penny, imposing an 11.5-cent gas-tax increase, and allocates another $2.5 billion for road projects statewide. But it’s not that simple. There are big issues that remain to be resolved about financing, union rules and the wild-card that has been presented by Inslee’s push for cap-and-trade legislation. They are sort of issues that might make you think they would be lucky to finish in time for the Super Bowl.
Clibborn Will Support Sales Tax Proposal
There really isn’t that much difference about the project list, though the proposal from the Republican-leaning Senate majority does pump more money into a number of big-money road-construction efforts – finishing projects like Spokane’s north-south freeway, accelerating construction of highways 167 and 509 between Puyallup and Sea-Tac International Airport, and directing more state money toward fixing the I-5 choke-point at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. The biggest difference is that the Senate would pump an additional $1.3 billion of gas-tax money into the Highway 520 bridge project on Lake Washington, eliminating the need to put tolls on the adjacent I-90 bridge. Of course there is the usual carping from Seattle interests that Eastern Washington Republicans have written a proposal that doesn’t return enough money to the Queen City – something you just have to expect whenever transportation is debated.
The real hitch is that the Senate Majority Coalition Caucus is insisting on reforms — aimed at reducing the cost of road projects and tightening the management of the Department of Transportation. Senate leaders say it is a key point in winning support of the electorate, which will have a say one way or another, either in the form of a legislative referendum or a rollback initiative that opponents seem certain to file. The management reforms do not appear to be controversial as the state Department of Transportation has had to own up to some mighty embarrassing multi-million-dollar problems — ferryboats that list, freeway bridges that don’t connect up, and floating bridges with cracked pontoons. And whatever the claims by the agency about its efficiency, there doesn’t appear to be much argument among lawmakers that there are problems.
The cost issue is something else. The Senate plan is built on two big reforms that would free up about $1 billion. It hopes to divert financing for stormwater drainage projects to a different fund, the Model Toxics Control Act account, a proposal that gives environmental groups heartburn. But the biggest controversy lies in a proposal to demanding an end to the sales tax on construction materials, a mechanism that allows the state to shunt a share of constitutionally protected gas-tax money to the state general fund. Over the 10 years of the transportation plan, using the Senate numbers, the mechanism would siphon off $670 million for any purpose lawmakers might devise.
“That’s not what people are paying gas tax for,” King says. He says his caucus is drawing the line on the sand on that one.
Clibborn says she can go along with the sales tax proposal, but it is a hard sell on the Democratic side of the aisle. “This is a heavy lift for my caucus, but I personally am willing to do the sales tax and fight for it, if it goes to the 520 bridge.”
Opposition Among Democrats
Opposes sales-tax move: Gov. Jay Inslee.
It’s not going to be easy. Democrats from the governor on down are reluctant to consider anything that would reduce the amount of money available for other programs. Inslee has been playing the tiny-tots card: At a meeting in Spokane last month, Inslee declared, “We’re not going to take money out of our schools to put it into our roads.”
And House Finance Chair Reuven Carlyle, D-Seattle, calls himself “unenthusiastic at best.” If the Senate wants to tinker at that level, lawmakers ought to consider a future-looking top-to-bottom overhaul, assuring revenue for transit, bicycling and other forms of transportation as electric vehicles supplant gas-powered trucks and automobiles. In other words, a rethinking of the policy established by a 1944 constitutional amendment that requires gas taxes to go to highway purposes.
“There are major structural issues on the table,” Carlyle says. “And if they are going to begin to raise them, let us raise them. But let us not cherry-pick which ones go on the table. If we are going to talk about taxation of transportation, then the taxation of transportation requires that broader conversation and policy discussion to include examining the state role in transit directly, and not just accept the 20th-century idea that it is purely a local function.”
Sounds like the sort of debate that could take months, if it happens at all. King scoffs at the idea that the sales-tax proposal takes money from schools: Under the Senate plan, sales-tax revenue would begin showing up in the 2018 fiscal year, which is when the state faces a Supreme Court deadline to find a way to fully fund basic education. Says King, “If you tell me that $30 million is going to stop us from fully funding education, then we have got problems.”
Labor Poised for a Fight
Labor is a key element of the coalition that is pushing the transportation package, but possible changes to union rules are giving it conniption fits. At the bargaining table, House and Senate have agreed to changes in apprenticeship requirements and changes in the way prevailing-wage surveys are conducted. Both add considerable costs to state road projects, and perhaps as is to be expected, the state Building and Construction Trades Council and the State Labor Council are declaring their opposition.
The agreement would impose requirements for the hiring of apprentices on projects of $5 million or more – the current threshold is $2 million. And it would require contractors to participate in the prevailing-wage surveys which set a floor for wages on public-works construction projects – surveys which in theory determine market rates for specific occupations, but which many believe set artificially high wages in practice. The Senate continues to press for another change in apprenticeship requirements, reducing the number of hours that must be worked by apprentices from 15 percent to 12 percent.
They are rather arcane details to anyone outside the contracting world, to be sure, but the proposals have labor in an uproar. A letter from the two labor groups declares that apprenticeship rules must continue as they are: “Given the demographics of an aging construction workforce and the reduction of apprentice opportunities during the great recession, we want to be doing everything we can to grow apprenticeship programs and apprenticeship opportunities. We cannot accept these changes and the state should not accept these changes.”
The letter goes on to say that the current prevailing wage surveys, now conducted by craft unions, ensure timely and accurate information, and that mandatory participation “will introduce bias into the system.”
Cap and Trade is Corker
Meanwhile a new issue has surfaced in the last month as Gov. Jay Inslee, closely aligned with environmental groups, has signaled that he will seek cap-and-trade legislation and low-carbon fuel standards – mechanisms that aim to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions but which would increase the cost of fuel. The Washington Trucking Associations is in a state of alarm and has notified the Legislature that it will withdraw support for a fuel-tax increase if the Inslee Administration continues on its course. The Association of Washington Business has taken its side. And that raises the question: Will the Inslee Administration agree to back off? At this point, the governor’s office is offering no comment.
It’s a big problem, King says. “Well, we are going to go to the people and say we need 11 ½ cents of your money over the next few years to fund all of these projects, and the governor wants to come in behind us and say, well, we are going to put a carbon fuel tax on your gasoline on top of that. That doesn’t sit well with a variety of people, and I conjecture it won’t sit well with the majority of the citizens of the state of Washington.”
Clibborn says Inslee’s climate-change push ought to be a debate for another time, and she says she will resist any attempt to link it with transportation. Seems like new issues always pop up at the last minute when transportation deals are being negotiated, she says, and you have to cut off debate somewhere. “Out of the woodwork have come projects that have never been on the list and issues that have never been discussed. It’s not like this transportation package has to be everything for everybody. Cap and trade came out of the blue, and it is just not going to be part of this package, one way or another, good bad or indifferent.
“We are negotiating on a few issues that we disagree on, but we are very collaborative and we are working very hard so that we will all feel good when we get done. We will go in and fight with our caucuses to get the votes to get it passed. I hope we can get it done before the next session – that’s my goal.”
Your support matters.
Public service journalism is important today as ever. If you get something from our coverage, please consider making a donation to support our work. Thanks for reading our stuff.
