Brad Shannon at the Tacoma News Tribune gives an excellent play-by-play of the 3-day special session of the Washington State Legislature that just ended.

Per the article:

Icing on the cake for Boeing would come later in the month if lawmakers can finally agree on a transportation package of up to $10 billion. A key Republican, Sen. Curtis King, said Saturday that a deal might be brokered as soon as Nov. 21-22, leading to what could become the fourth special session of the year.

Sen. King (R-Yakima) is Co-Chair of the Senate Transportation Committee.

29 Replies to “Lege Gives Boeing What They Want; Adjourns”

      1. It wasn’t the session or the Boeing package that is pissing off legislators. It’s the fact that nothing else at all got done.

  2. Predictions for the Transportation package:
    SR-509 completion, to draw more traffic into the tunnel; nothing else in King County, especially not the 520 bridge western approach.
    SR-167 completion.
    CRC in it’s entirety.
    3 or 4 new eastern washington freeways
    A half dozen or so widening projects, mostly in Pierce and Snohomish counties.

    No significant money for maintenance.
    No significant money for bridge rehab/replacement.
    No state money for transit.
    No ability to raise local money for transit.
    Some sort of new convoluted rule that restricts existing & future RTA tax collections in some obscure way.

    1. That’s exactly what I’m afraid of too. Enough that I’m actually rooting for tea party Republicans to shut it down, just like they did the last time.

      If Metro gets anything out of this at all, it will be a temporary extension of the $20 VLF for another two years, leaving us right back where started. Given that we still have plan B to fall back on anyway, we should be arguing for it to be voted down.

      1. Yeah, I don’t get why the powers that be would expect us to support a state new highway construction package when all we get is the possibility of a local vote on a regressive tax to save some existing one-seat bus rides to areas with less there than Bailoland.

    2. You’re being too pessimistic. Since when has such a large highways package passed without a transit component? And the deal that was being debated this summer would have given Metro a longer-term fix and some modest expansion money, as I understood it. The senate did not actually vote no on that, it just didn’t feel like debating the entire transportation package a week before the end of the session. Those aren’t the same thing. The issue seems to be more, whether we can support a transit package tied to so many highway projects, not whether the legislature would eliminate the transit component from it or make it into another 2-year stopgap. The whole thing really hinges more on whether senators are willing to raise a larger amount of taxes for exurban highway construction, than on the tiny amount of taxes of the transit component.

      1. I don’t think the current legislature has the ability to produce a transportation plan that will pass a statewide vote of the people. At least not on the first try. That is pessimistic of me.

    3. If the legislature actually passed a package that was such a stick in the eye to King County, any Seattle Democrat who voted for it would – or at least should – be potentially vulnerable to a primary challenge.

      1. Seattle area Democrats wouldn’t have to vote for it for it to pass. It’s the handful of King County republicans that would have to take the risk by supporting it. And in a primary challenges on that side of the isle, stiffing pubic transit is often considered an asset.

  3. I think frankly we transit advocates need a petition that speaks with one voice for and from all transit users.

    a) This Beyond Stupid of transit internecine fighting gives money to Road Bullies to crawl certain websites and spend it on boobs and booze.
    b) Being I understand the Republican mind very well, it’s one thing when it’s transit agencies lobbying for us – it’s another when the grassroots stand up and say to the Road Bullies that we write your code, we work instead of welfare, we share the road efficiently, and most of all we vote, vote, vote!

    Yes, you can tell how PISSED I am. Boeing made clear they needed a transportation package – one that should have included a circular around Paine Field, more money for Island Transit to take adoring fans of a Growling Boeing product to America’s OLF, and most of all new double tall buses for all those Boeing employees having to chuck the car due to take-aways and use transit.

    Did I say I was pissed? Good.

    1. One would think that with all the discussion about building the new jet and all the jobs at Paine Field, Olympia could offer some help to Sound Transit to extend Lynnwood Link there without waiting until ST3 or 4. But there is so much other infighting and defunding of local transit, no one has even raised this as a help to land the jet.

      1. That would be nice. Another thing the state could do would be to just pay for the Paine Field detour if a Lynnwood-Everett extension is otherwise approved. By my estimate, if it’s all elevated it wouldn’t add much to the travel time, and would also allow transfer stations at 99 and at Casino Road. The travel-time increase would only be felt by those going to Everett or transferring to further north, so they would be the only ones who might object. If such a Payne Field station is built, I hope it can also serve the visitors’ center and buses to Mukilteo. That would mean a well-located transfer station, and probably shuttle buses to Payne Field and/or the visitors center because the area is so unwalkable.

        The reason it wasn’t raised is that Boeing has never shown much interest in transit. Other companies would clamor for Link stations near all their plants, or have shuttles to the stations, rather than just depending on “a free parking space for every worker” and some minimal vanpools and bus routes. If Boeing had been as insistent on Link to its Everett and Renton plants as Microsoft has been, and willing to pay for some of the station-area infrastructure, then an Everett extension and a Burien-Renton line would have been further along.

    2. Maybe the Sounder line could be re-routed, so that after Mukilteo Station it runs past Paine and the Boeing FWY, before connecting with tracks on the east side of 5 for the final approach to Everett Station. There’s already a little track that runs out of Muk and close to Seaway…so we’re only talking about 5 miles, most of which is probably company property, or underdeveloped. Since Everett Station was moved a few years ago from west downtown to east, it probably makes this easier.

      That wouldn’t replace Link, but it would A) support Boeing interests in the area, and B) might boost the Sounder North line. Maybe it would also avoid a few troublesome cliffs…

      How’s that for creativity Sam? Like that better than my rail ferry idea (to Kitsap and the OP) of a few years ago?

  4. We just passed a $9 billion tax break for Boeing.

    Who and what exactly is going to pay for this $10 billion transportation package?

      1. Maybe we should use a Personal Property Tax. Massachusetts has one that includes levies on private ownership of

        Third, Public stocks and securities, bonds of railroads and street railways and stocks in turnpikes, bridges and moneyed corporations within or without this commonwealth.

        https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleIX/Chapter59/Section4

        WA State has one too!

        http://dor.wa.gov/docs/pubs/prop_tax/persprop.pdf

        If we could extend this tax to financial assets, and increase our property tax rates, then we could fairly fund transit (like Massachusetts).

      2. I think you’d find the biggest opposition to that within your own party. The argument would largely be that it could drive large asset holders to move out of state. That rich people and businesses will “go galt” if we start taxing financial assets that way. I don’t particularly buy that argument, but it would be made loudly and often.

        How about the 5% capital gains tax idea that’s been bouncing around the local left? It’s a little more delicate, I think.

      3. Taxing income (including capital gains) is more reliable than taxing wealth, for various reasons.

      4. “it could drive large asset holders to move out of state…”

        Buh-bye!

        Asset hoarders are not contributing to jobs, and income growth. They merely drive up the cost of goods that could be put to good use by others.

        Asset and property taxes disincentivse hoarding.

  5. @Nathanael:

    “… is more reliable…”

    Are you going to leave it at that, or actually make an argument with fact-based reasoning instead of assertion?

    1. Already proven by our states sales tax dependent revenue forecasts. The state suffers reduced revenue when people are spooked by future economic prospects even if they’ve got the income to spend. Compare to our neighbor Oregon which taxes income. They can reasonably count on revenue from income rather than spending behavior.

      2. A property tax is more reliable than either a sales tax or an income tax because assessed values tend not to have wild swings and property values tend to react more slowly to local economic conditions.

      3. A property tax is more stable than an income tax pretty much by fiat. It’s absolutely possible to have wild swings in property values, especially for land. But property taxes are generally calculated by looking at the total assessed value of all property, and deciding how much money we want to raise, and then choosing the tax rate which produces the correct amount of money given the assessed value.

        Now, having said that, part of the reason this system works is that property (especially land) isn’t particularly liquid. You can’t exactly hide your land in a closet. You can sell it to someone else, but then the other person will pay the tax. A tax on financial wealth is much more problematic, since it’s much more difficult to pin down the complete tax base. And evasion is both easier and more profitable.

      4. What Aleks said. It’s way too easy to just make up valuations for wealth, or to sequester or hide it in funny schemes.

        It’s much harder to hide or sequester income than it is to hide or sequester wealth, and it’s much harder to falsify the value of income than the value of wealth. This is just a practical thing.

        One thing about property taxes is — they actually have, to a lesser extent, the same problems with “bogus numbers” which financial-wealth taxes do. Nobody really knows how much most of those properties are worth. The work of the assessors comparing properties to neighboring properties is endless and gives, at best, ballpark estimates. But it’s possible to get ballpark estimates, and there’s a good reason to tax land specifically.

        There’s another thing. People can actually be forced out of their homes by property taxes or other fixed taxes, which people always complain about. This isn’t possible with income taxes: anyone who pays income taxes just got new income, so an income tax payer always ahead, as long as the income taxes are less than 100% (which they always are). People are happier with income taxes than wealth taxes, and yet income taxes perform much the same function.

        Wealth taxes have proved hard to implement. Florida had a moderately effective “intangibles tax” for a long time, essentially a wealth tax on stocks and bonds, which are easier to track than most things because they have public value quotes and public ownership records, but that’s the only example I can think of in recent decades. It’s been repealed.

      5. Also, unlike land, financial wealth values DO have wild swings. Look at the stock market. The wild swings in the “valuations” which would be used for a wealth tax are much larger than the swings in the dividends or interest, or even in realized capital gains, which is what the income tax is based on.

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