Today’s winner: King County Metro.
The senate transportation committee just passed Sen. Scott White’s (D-46) emergency transit funding bill. While the bill was scaled back from the original version, the good news is that bill would allow King County to impose the temporary vehicle-license fee with or without a public vote (an amendment to require a public vote, by Sen. Tim Sheldon, D-35, failed). A vote, as we’ve noted, would push the implementation of any fee voters pass back too far to fix transit agencies’ short-term funding crises. King County is facing a $200 million shortfall over the next two years, cutting 200,000 hours of service.)
The bad news: The maximum fee was cut by a third, to $20.
Transportation committee chair Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen (D-10) said she was impressed by the work King County had done to cut costs and improve and monitor the efficiency of its transit system. “I had some grave concerns over this bill to start with,” Haugen said. “I can support this for King County because I think they’ve done something that we’ve asked all the transit [systems] to do, which is to really do a review” of their operations.
As King County County transportation chair Larry Phillips told the committee in testimony last week, the county has “worked very hard to wrench every service dollar out of the agency that we can to put [buses] out on the street”—negotiating concessions from the transit union, implementing workplace efficiencies, and doing an audit of the agency that identified potential money-saving measures.
If the bill passes the legislature and gets the governor’s signature (Gregoire vetoed similar legislation two years ago) have to decide whether to implement the fee or put it to a countywide vote, and any extension of the fee beyond two years would require a vote of the people.
Today’s Loser: Pierce and Snohomish Transit
The legislation as adopted today only applies to King County, leaving Pierce and Snohomish Counties without access to emergency funding. Haugen said she didn’t feel comfortable extending the fee authority to those counties because they hadn’t done the same due diligence as King County to identify potential cost savings.
There’s hope for the beleagured counties. The house version, sponsored by Rep. Marko Liias (D-31, Edmonds) passed out of committee earlier this month. Community Transit in Snohomish has already cut weekend service and Pierce County is looking at a 35 percent cut in service.
