Joel Connelly has a piece, the last half dealing with the rejection of Prop 1. Here’s the conclusion, and the only part that talks about the future:
The state can hopefully get on with transportation projects, using variable (rush hour) tolls as a constructive carrot-stick approach to relieve congestion.
The Sierra Club will, one hopes, go back to being a player in Northwest conservation rather than an instrument of the McGinn-O’Brien agenda. Bellevue plutocrat Kemper Freeman will, one trusts, think twice before blowing another $1.1 million on an Eyman initiative.
The Seattle City Council should have the sense to bring more cooks into the kitchen, and give its next transportation package a little more time in the oven. Voters don’t like spending hard-earned money on something half-baked.
For someone who has written repeatedly (including in the non-quoted part of this piece) that a big problem with the car tabs was that it was regressive, he seems to have forgotten to make any sort of push to the legislature to give us an MVET or some other progressive means of paying for it (a 1% high earner’s income tax would be even better, although I have no idea how much it raises).
Anyway, the only solutions by government agencies Joel mentions are the legislature should do something transit related and the city should talk to more people. But unless the state allows us to tax ourselves more fairly, the biggest problem will persist (and Olympia isn’t likely to act without people like Joel pushing them).
Finally, not to spend too much time on an aside, but the Sierra Club does a lot of conservation work. The first non-election thing on the Cascade Chapter’s website is logging trails, for instance.
In a unanimous decision issued in NEDC v. Brown, a case involving logging roads on Oregon State lands, the Ninth Circuit ruled that polluted stormwater generated by logging roads is subject to regulation under the Clean Water Act’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES). The August 2011 decision requires that logging roads meet the standards of the Clean Water Act that would protect our clean water and salmon and steelhead. We are stunned that Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna would join with very conservative states such as Arkansas in urging the Supreme Court to overturn this court decision.
Sierra Club activities vary by the chapter and group. Some groups are just hiking groups. Some do conservation. Some do politics. Some do all of the above.
The Cascade Chapter has been politically active for at least the last 15 years.
Why not a local option gas tax? Let Seattle voters choose between cheaper gas or potholes, and let eastern Washington voters choose between gravel or paved. Here’s an even better idea: Instead of sending $135 million a year of King County gas tax revenues to jackrabbit counties, give that money to Seattle to maintain city streets.
I’ve said this before, but some thing have to be repeated a million times before people listen: Regressive taxation has gone as far as it can go in this state, and until we get real tax reform, nothing is possible.
Even when I agree with him, Connelly is something of a cheap shot artist. Rebutting his ad hominems could be a full time job. Kind of amazing for someone who has a hobby horse about civility in politics.
Meanwhile, the city cannot, by itself, do much about regressivity, but it can do a lot about spending the money it raises more wisely. City council should come back with a package, hopefully at the $40 level that leaves some room for future projects and better economic times, that foregoes pouring money into a streetcar extension only Paul Allen and his cronies want, and instead make a more meaningful dent in Seattle’s over $1 billion in backlogged road and bridge repairs. That would benefit everyone – cars, buses, bikes, and pedestrians alike.
@5,
Bridges are extremely expensive, so I don’t see how you make the amount smaller and do any sort of meaningful bridge repair.
@6 Godden’s proposal, as an example, had $40 rather than $60 tabs and 75% rather than 29% going to infrastructure. That’d be a 166% increase (sez my trusty calculator) right there. Over a ten year taxing authority, that’s not chump change.
TOLLS=TAXES. Its a slippery slope.
I was in Tampa a year or two ago and we rented a car and drove down to meet some friends in New Port Richy (probally an hour south or maybe north). I think it was about an hour long drive so roughly the same as driving from Olympia to Seattle. I think we had to stop at some where between 3 and 5 toll booths along the freeway (not on bridges or anything, just at random spots on the interstate). First of all the little stops consume a lot of time. And second of all, I think that all of those tolls added another $5-10 to our trip. Now imagine making that trip every day as a commuter… Thats another $200 a month (or $2400 a year!) in mandatory expenses. MANATORY EXPENSES WITH THE PROCEEDS GOING TO THE GOVERNMENT = TAXES!!! I havent asked to have that here. I dont want it here. And why are we even talking about something like that durring a time where the economy is already so bad?? Times are tough?? The soc solution = TAX TAX TAX!