1. In light of declining sales tax transit revenue, (Pierce County is looking at a 35 percent cut in bus service this year and King County Metro is looking at a $200 million shortfall over the next two years, cutting 200,000 hours of service ), Rep. Marko Liias (D-21, Edmonds), backed by a new group called Transportation for Washington, is unveiling a transit bill in Olympia today.
Rep. Marko Liias
The bill would allow local voters to fund transit by approving any of the following: end the sales tax exemption on gasoline; a progressive motor vehicle excise tax; a vehicle license fee based on annual mileage; or a tax on fuel efficiency (or lack thereof).
Liias has already proposed a band-aid transit funding solution—a temporary $30 congestion fee. That bill got a hearing yesterday where a bipartisan duo from the King County Council—Republican council member Jane Hague and Democratic council member Joe McDermott—testified to support the bill. “We wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t already tightened our belts,” Hague said.
Jane Hague
McDermott, a former state legislator, called transit service a “lifeline” for low-income people who rely on bus service to get to jobs.
When transit agencies cut service and raise fares, Director of Commute Seattle Jamie Cheney added, a “virtuous circle turns into a vicious circle.”
Surprisingly, Tim Eyman (who has introduced a measure to reduce licensing fees to $30 across the state) was a no-show at yesterday’s hearing, leaving the AAA (unsurprisingly) as the only group testifying against the Liias bill.
2. The city council’s annual retreat, once a major source of news—and gossip and exciting out-of-town travel—for city hall reporters (see: Mayor Mike McGinn’s surprise seawall announcement last year), is slimming down. This year, it’s been scaled back to a “legislative planning committee” meeting at City Hall. (Boo!)
City council president Richard Conlin explains: “We decided we were just going to basically do a planning workshop … where each council member will talk about their priorities and then take presentations from [council] central staff, the city auditor, and [hear] the race and social justice initiative work plan.”
The move, council staff say, will save the city about $10,000 over last year’s retreat, which was held in a waterfront convention hall.
3. A bill introduced in the state legislature this week (and scheduled for a hearing in the senate transportation committee next week) would exempt the University of Washington—thanks to its commute trip reduction program—from the city’s parking tax.
The bill is being sponsored by Sen. Ed Murray (D-43, Capitol Hill) in the senate and Rep. Liias in the house.
4. On the same day that the state legislature considered exempting houseboats from shoreline environmental regulations, the city’s Department of Planning and Development sent out a splashy press release (and blog post, and call to PubliCola) announcing its new shoreline management rules, which “allow existing floating homes to be maintained, re-built, replaced, and expanded within existing development standards.”
Houseboat owners have said the existing rules are too stringent and make it impossible or prohibitively expensive for them to renovate or upgrade their homes.
5. Yesterday’s assault on the Growth Management Act (the 20-year-old law that makes local governments coordinate land use, transportation, infrastructure, and housing policy to push efficient development and fight sprawl), wasn’t limited to the bill we flagged that passed out of committee yesterday afternoon delaying GMA implementation requirements.
Another bill that allows some smaller counties to simply drop out of the GMA process, sponsored by Rep. Joel Kretz (R-7, Ferry County) passed the same committee yesterday, 7-2—with Democratic Reps. Dave Upthegrove (D-33, SeaTac, Des Moines) and Joe Fitzgibbon (D-34, W. Seattle, Burien) voting no.
Kretz’s bill says counties that weren’t originally mandated to follow GMA requirements because they didn’t meet population thresholds, but opted in anyway, can now backtrack and opt out (defeating the entire spirit and purpose of longterm planning, environmentalists complain).
When Kretz’s bill was first proposed, it didn’t allow counties that had since met qualifying population thresholds to back out. But yesterday, it was amended to make exceptions for Kretz’s Ferry County as well as neighboring Pend Oreille.
In a small victory for environmentalists, the bill was also amended to say the counties still had to protect forest and farmland.
