OLYMPIA, June 27.—On Wednesday, the House finally took that vote that has been expected all session on a multi-billion-dollar transportation tax package. And the unthinkable happened.
The House voted no.
Jaws dropped open and observers gasped. The House fell silent. The electronic voting indicator, high up on the front and rear walls of the chamber, put the tally at 49-41. That’s one vote short of the 50 required to pass a bill.
Took a good half-minute for the chamber to digest the implication. Took another half-minute for anyone to figure out what to do. State Rep. Marko Liias, D-Mukilteo, switched his vote from yes to no – setting up a parliamentary maneuver that will allow him to move for reconsideration today. The final tally stood at 48-42.
Ten feet from the statehouse it might sound like the most ordinary of things – the House took a vote and it said no. But the glaciers have melted since the last time anything like it happened, and a legislator might go an entire career without seeing a bill go down to defeat. Votes never take place unless the support has been lined up in advance. Advocates of the transportation bill said they thought they had the votes. Something went haywire, in a big way.
David Postman, communications director for Gov. Jay Inslee, looked on the bright side. “It wasn’t a complete shock,” he said. But now advocates must scramble to find that final vote, and they don’t have much time. Lawmakers must pass a budget by June 30 — Sunday — to avoid a shutdown of state government, and once they finish their major task of the year there is little that stands in the way of the exit door, particularly a transportation tax proposal that appears to enjoy only tepid support.
Nearly Six Months of Buildup
Maybe the shock wasn’t complete, but after six months of buildup it was certainly a stunning plot twist. It never is easy to pass a gas-tax increase – the signature feature of this latest proposal was a 10.5 cent increase, to be phased in through 2014. The House was expected to put the tax proposal in motion and drop the $10 billion hot potato in the lap of the more tax-averse Senate. That would force the upper chamber to make a decision about a pair of big controversies embedded in the proposal – a Vancouver bridge project and a public vote on the package. The House said yes to the Columbia River Crossing and no to the referendum, but if Wednesday’s vote is allowed to stand those issues become irrelevant — the House may have spared the upper chamber the debate.
Supporters say they were convinced they had the 50 votes to pass the measure, and they are stumped to say why they fell just short of the mark. Liias said he has filed notice that he will move for reconsideration. According to House rules, notice must be filed the day a vote takes place, and the motion must be voted upon by the end of the following day. Liias has the opportunity to move for reconsideration because he switched his vote, thus placing him on the prevailing side. “We are close, we’re going to keep working on it, and we need one vote,” he said.”I’ve seen a lot tougher bleak come-from-behind circumstances where you need four or five votes. Here we need one. And we’ll keep working.”
Work on the transportation proposal began long before the session started. It has been nearly a decade since the state last raised gas taxes, a nickel a gallon in 2003 and nine-and-a-half cents in 2005, and even though motorists are still paying those taxes the money is essentially used up – to get a bigger bang for the buck up front, the state bonded against the money, and so those tax hikes will be going toward debt service for the next 15 to 17 years. Two years ago a coalition of business, labor, environmental and transit organizations began working to build consensus for a new package, through the blue-ribbon ‘Connecting Washington’ task force. Eventually it came up with $50 billion in needs – whittled down to a somewhat-more-palatable $10 billion in the final version of the bill.
For months now business and labor have been leading the charge on the bill, lining up votes and winning the support of Gov. Inslee, who argued during last year’s campaign that 2013 wasn’t the year, but who has become one of its biggest boosters. But something just went wrong.
Searching for One Vote
What exactly happened? First thing worth noting is that every Republican save one voted no on the bill, Hans Zeiger of Puyallup. Swing votes in the House note that they were urged to vote no by colleagues in the Senate, who argued the proposal was dead on arrival – so why take a vote for taxes?
Transportation generally isn’t a partisan vote – tax packages usually find support and opposition from both sides. But it is worth noting that with 55 members the House Democrats could have passed the measure on their own. Within their ranks six members voted no — Reps. Brian Blake of Aberdeen, Hans Dunshee of Snohomish, Kathy Haigh of Shelton, Chris Hurst of Enumclaw, Monica Stonier of Vancouver, and Kevin Van de Wege of Sequim – together with the vote-switching Liias. One Democrat was absent, state Rep. Dean Takko of Longview.
A subdued Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island, chairwoman of the House Transportation Committee, said she wasn’t sure why her fellow Democrats bolted: “I have no idea. They didn’t tell me. They didn’t talk to me.” Some of the opposition within her party’s ranks may have had to do with a kids-before-concrete sentiment – many in House ranks were said to demand a vote on the operating budget before transportation.
Members might have found dozens of reasons to vote against a tax increase, Liias said, from the CRC to general opposition to gas taxes. “We are never going to get unanimity on these things. You know, even on the operating budget we never get unanimity. We do the best we can. That’s why we hoped, particularly in the Puget Sound, that some of the Republican members could have come across to support us. So we are close, we’re going to keep working on it, and we need one vote.”
Republicans Charge Inefficiency
The vote represented an unusual case in which House Republicans voted en masse against a position that enjoys strong support in the state’s business community. But in speeches on the House floor, they said they could find not dozens but 10 billion reasons to vote no. Some questioned the fact that the plan would encumber about a third of the tax increase, $3.6 billion, with 25-year bonds. Said Ed Orcutt, “I can tell you what will happen after 10 years, Mr. Speaker, because it is happening 10 1/2 and eight years since the last packages. Somebody will come back and say in order to keep us working, we need you to take more money out of the taxpayers’ pocket, because that is being asked with this bill. We’ll be right in the exact same spot that we are in now in 10 years if we do this package. Or very close to the same spot.”
Others were critical of the state’s management of transportation projects – and while it should be noted that in a run-up to the Wednesday vote, the House passed four of nine transportation-reform bills advocated by House Republicans, they were least controversial ones of the bunch. That left critics plenty of ammo. In an impassioned speech on the House floor, state Rep. Matt Manweller, R-Ellensburg, took aim at the longstanding state practices of requiring contractors to pay union-level “prevailing wage” rates and of requiring that sales taxes be paid on construction materials – essentially siphoning gas-tax money into the state general fund. Add the effect of bonding debt service, he argued, and it is like spending a quarter to get a dime.
“Only in government is that a good idea,” he said. “Mr. Speaker, I’m sure you’ve gone into buildings and you have seen those signs, this is a smoke-free zone, this is a gun-free zone — we ought to have a sign out there in front of the Capitol, this is a calculator-free zone. If you have a calculator we will show you immediately to the exit.”
Saves Senate the Trouble
Democrats say they’re going to be looking down the list of projects that would be funded by the proposal as they identify their targets. Liias specifically mentioned the widening of Highway 12 in the 16th Legislative District, represented by no-votes Maureen Walsh, R-Walla Walla and Terry Nealey, R-Dayton. The Red Mountain interchange in the 8th Legislative District, represented by no-votes Larry Haler, R-Richland and Brad Klippert, R-Kennewick. And the Highway 167/509 extension in the 30th District, represented by no-vote Linda Kochmar, R-Federal Way.
But the fact that House advocates have to start making that list points up the biggest irony of the House snafu. All along it has been the Senate that has been perceived as the problem. But as with everything in the family, trouble starts in the House. State Sen. Don Benton, D-Vancouver, one of the biggest critics of the Columbia River Crossing and the decision to ditch a referendum, said he doubts now that he will even have the chance to make his own impassioned speeches on the floor. “I don’t think they can get the votes together,” he said. “I think they’ll try again, but I don’t know where they are going to pick up that one vote.”
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