Now that many of the genuine no-hope bills have died their early death, here’s what’s still alive in Olympia that matters for transit and land use. Status is as of yesterday afternoon. Bills start out in the relevant committee, then go to Rules to await their turn for a floor vote.
Really Big Deals
Out of committee, awaiting floor vote
SB 5773 / HB 1953 applies specifically to Community Transit, and would allow up to 0.3% more in sales tax through 2018 given voter approval. This provision replaced a 1% Motor Vehicle Excise Tax (MVET) with no time limit in an earlier version.
SB 5088 prevents C-Tran from forming a “high-capacity transit district” to vote on and pay taxes for light rail, forcing it to seek approval and taxation from the entire C-Tran service area.
HB 1959 / SB 5861 concerns two revenue sources: up to $40 for TBDs without a public vote; and a 1.5% MVET for King County, of which 60% must be for transit and 40% for roads, with no public vote. (Still in committee in the Senate)
SB 5793 / HB 1898: allows Pierce Transit to create an “enhanced transit zone” within its service area with higher taxes and better service, separating out precincts that are more strongly pro-transit. (Still in committee in the Senate)
Still in Committee
HB 1485 gives transportation benefit districts (TBDs) the power to levy a $40 vehicle license fee (instead of $20) without a public vote.
A source tells me all of the transit revenue bills may eventually be combined into one super-bill in each house. Some or all of these bills were sponsored by Reps. Liias, Moscoso, Stanford, Roberts, Dunshee, Sells, McCoy, Ryu, Fey, Sawyer, Fitzgibbon, Jinkins, Farrell, Pollet, Morrell, Kagi, Pedersen, Bergquist, Tarleton, and Cody in the House; and Sens. Harper, Eide, Shin, McAuliffe, Nelson, Frockt, Kline, Darneille, Conway, Murray, and Kohl-Welles.
HB 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957: The Clibborn plan (with lots of cosponsors) to raise the gas tax (good) and spend a strong majority of it on new highway projects (bad).
Also Relevant
Unless otherwise noted, these have all made it out of committee.
HB 1563 / SB 5598 allows public agencies to sell their surplus lands for below market rate to low income housing agencies. A noble cause, but should transit agencies even get in the business of subsidizing housing?
HB 1224 / SB 5636 allows four counties with less than 20,000 inhabitants to no longer comply with the Growth Management Act.
HB 1233 adds health as an objective of the transportation system. This would reduce the perceived return on investment of car infrastructure, as driving has terrible implications for public health.
HB 1745 would make SR 167 High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes permanent, exempts emergency vehicles.
SB 5066 / HB 1045: Reduces bureaucracy for cities trying to reduce speed limits to 20 mph on “non-arterial highways,” possibly making streets safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. (It has passed the House altogether)
HB 1648 allows the Community Economic Revitalization Board (CERB) so it would also fund revitalization of vacant lands inside cities, not just out on the periphery. A useful correction to a pro-sprawl policy.
HB 1695 acccelerates the use of lodging taxes to fund affordable housing near transit stations in King County.
With all the individual bills for each transit faction being kicked around, it’s nice to see Monte Hall and his show ‘Let’s Make a Deal’, in full play this year.
I wonder what CT/Snohomish has to cave in on to get another 3/10 sales tax authorization.
HB1224/SB5636 sounds, on the surface, to be absolutely horrible. It’s rural counties *specifically* which need to avoid sprawl and preserve agricultural land.
These are counties that previously opted in to following GMA by choice. It seems like there should be a process for opting out for counties that are not mandated to follow GMA. It’s possible that some counties might refrain from following GMA by choice because they don’t want to make an irrevocable commitment to follwing it.
Counties with under 20,000 people aren’t really under any growth pressures due to the lack of jobs,etc. The only exception to this might be Skamania County due to proximity to Portland/Vancouver.
Even when I was going to college in Walla Walla County which has about 60,000 people, the largest housing development that would get built would be about 30-50 homes at a time and they usually took a long time to finish building them out and sell. It seemed to be much more of an organic growth due to population rather than huge tracts of land being gobbled up by sprawl within 2-5 years.
Ah yes, I forget about your geography. The counties with potential future sprawl problems are Skamania, Cowlitz, Kitsap, Mason, Thurston, Pierce, King, Snohomish, Island, Skagit, Whatcom Spokane, and Stevens — nothing else is nearly close enough to a real city with real jobs. The question then is whether any of these would be exempted.
I’m biased by having lived only in places which were within “extreme commute” distances of real cities with real jobs.
You could add Kittitas to your list. I have heard of people commuting from Cle Elum to the Seattle area. Maybe they only do it during the summertime.
Lewis County is within easy commute distance of Olympia.
So what would be the impact in these counties? How much development is the GMA depressing?
I worked at a realty-tax company and saw the number of active mortgages per county in four states (WA, OR, ID, MT). I.e., we sent a searcher to each county twice a year to get the properties’ tax assessments and whether they’d been paid. There are two or three companies that do this, so I saw about a third of the mortgages. In all four states, the small counties had only a tiny handful of properties: ten or so at a time. The large counties had hundreds, and even medium-sized counties like Spokane and Missoula had a hundred or two. So a dramatic difference between medium-sized counties like Missoula and small counties like Asotin and Adams (southeast Washington). This suggests that eliminating the GMA there wouldn’t change much.
OK then! That’s good news. This isn’t how things behave back east. :-P
Some of those counties, which aren’t required to plan under GMA, “opted-in” when the state gave them grants to do their initial planning efforts. The cost of continuing to stay in compliance is really steep though, especially because critical area regs require “best available science” and many of those smaller counties have been hammered by the time and expense required to meet that standard.
Perhaps the standard for “best available science” should be redefined so that “available” means “locally available expertise” rather than “flying experts in from the other side of the country”.
I am disappointed that SB 5773/HB 1953 were changed to a sales tax initiative. I don’t believe this really provides a stable funding source. I am not sure what was their thought process to change this to a sales tax and expecting a different result from earlier allowances in sales tax.
[Ot]
In regards to the potential for taxing bicycles, whatever the motivation, I was forwarded this stunningly bizarre
claim by state rep Ed Orcutt (R – Kalama) that bicyclists should pay a tax since they are polluting the atmosphere
by breathing heavily.
Original post[?]:
http://blog.cascade.org/2013/03/legislator-to-small-business-owner-bicycling-bad-for-the-environment/
Verification:
http://seattlebikeblog.com/2013/03/02/state-lawmaker-says-bicycling-is-not-good-for-the-environment-should-be-taxed/
Wow. Next up, a tax on gyms and fitness centers?
“The Clibborn plan (with lots of cosponsors) to raise the gas tax (good) and spend a strong majority of it on new highway projects (bad).”
Um,…. I thought that was the idea behind raising the gas tax, especially with the state’s 18th Amendment,… to spend it on highway projects.
Why else would higher gas taxes be proposed?
I dunno, maybe taking care of some long-deferred repair and maintenance of the highways we already have (I-5 repave long overdue, unfunded, and no future plans in sight)? Maybe filling the giant budget holes on in-progress megaprojects (520 bridge, 99 tunnel)?
Also, “highway uses” as stated in the 18th amendment does not equal “freeways only”. Items such as ferryboats, local city/county streets, and even school buses can fall under that umbrella. However, the convention in Olympia has been to spend nearly all gas tax money on freeways, and let everything else be funded by local taxes.
You read right past the word “new” that you quoted.
I hope that Martin is right and several of these transit bills get combined. Instead of having legislation tailored to a single transit agency, let’s provide all agencies the same new funding options:
1. TBDs and transit agencies may levy a $40/yr car excise fee for transit (without a vote).
2. Any transit agency, including county agencies such as King County Metro, can designate an “enhanced transit zone” or “high capacity transit zone” and levy a 1.5% MVET (without a vote) or additional sales taxes up to 1.3% (with a vote).
I prefer providing more of the new funidng options for “enhanced transit zones” since that will give agencies incentives to provide more core service, and public votes for transit would take place in the areas that support transit the most.
I agree with this. How much do you want to bet that efforts to hobble C-TRAN with respect to light rail on the CRC will work against any sensible solution?
The effort to keep light rail off of the CRC boggles my mind. It seems like such a small investment for a connection to the existing MAX investment.
Hey we can leave MAX off of the CRC as long as we re-build I-5 to have no entrances or exits in Clark County.