Following up on my previous post about Pend Oreille County’s efforts to triple the $1.4 million a year in impact fees Seattle City Light pays on the Boundary Dam, I stumbled across some numbers which kinda pound home one of my central theses: that contrary to the bitching and moaning often heard from the other side of the mountains, big, bad Seattle is not sucking tax dollars from the rest of the state.
At least, not when it comes to transportation dollars.
According to a report from the Washington State Department of Transportation (hat tip: Political Buzz), between 1984 and 2003, the Puget Sound region received 98-cents back for every $1.00 spent in state and federal transportation taxes. And Pend Oreille County? They saw an impressive $2.58 return. That’s a $68 million subsidy over 20 years, or roughly $260 annually per man, woman and child.
Of course, after decades of neglect and a couple of gas tax increases, things have turned around for Puget Sound residents, who are projected to realize a $1.02 return for every buck spent between 2004 and 2015… though Pend Oreille still brings home the bacon, munching on a sizzling $1.88 of transportation spending for every dollar in taxes. Sweet.
I point this out not to begrudge Pend Oreille’s good fortune, but merely to acknowledge that it exists. An acknowledgement you won’t get from most Eastern Washington politicians, who would rather play the “Fuck Seattle” game than address their region’s underlying problems.
Electric rate in Metaline? $0.025 per KWH. As cheap as it gets.
http://www.co.pend-oreille.wa.us/metaline.html
The PSE rate is from $0.065 to $0.085, depending on usage, with an increase coming to $0.10.
What Goldy fails to mention is that County Bumstix has much lower salaries. Who lives there except farmers?
Don’t understand your point, Crush. Yeah, there are lower salaries in rural areas (everywhere, not just E. WA), but see if gasoline prices or mortgage rates here and there differ as much as the price of electricity cited by Steve. Also, what do local salaries have to do with allocation of transportation tax dollars? Maybe something, but I’ve not heard of that being a factor before.
The Pend Oreille is a beautiful river running through some really beautiful and wild country. Country I’d love returned to a more wild state, including a wild Pend Oreille River. Seattle City Light should address this issue by redoubling it’s conservation efforts, putting photovoltaic’s atop every Seattle rooftop and tearing down Boundary dam.
Plus, it would really fuck with the “Seattle’s stealing our money” crowd.
Hey since the HA intelligentsia (stillbentoversuckinghisminuteschwanzstucker) and others the HA faithful claim those east of the mountains should break away from those west of the mountains, Puddy has an idea. Well, no one told stillbentoversuckinghisminuteschwanzstucker his idea sucked…
None of the food farmed east of the Cascades makes it to Seattle. Apples, grapes, onions, vegetables etc. You Seattleites (King County too) can’t get those foodstuffs provided east of the mountain from other sources. You do without.
We’ll see what happens.
@1 I don’t understand why the Utilities and Transportation Commission, which is chaired by Mark Sidran, gave PSE a 9% natural gas rate increase this winter.
Natural gas prices have fallen 50% since last summer.
Oh, and PSE’s CEO is getting a $20 million bonus because WUTC approved PSE’s buyout by an Australian hedge fund.
@5 We’re already doing without eastern Washington food. Did you know that 90% of the food sold in the U.S. has imported ingredients, pudfool? That food stamps were invented to help farmers, not hungry people? (That’s why it’s run by the Department of Agriculture instead of HHS.) That the Columbia River dams were built to provide cheap irrigation water to farmers, not cheap electricity to the cities? Bet you didn’t know all this, pudpacker. Well, it’s all true.
I wouldn’t be surprised if GOP opposition to food stamps cost them the 2008 election. It’s never a good idea to mess with farmers. Farm subsidies are a third rail. Remember which state launched Obama’s successful White House bid? Iowa. Remember which state launched Kerry’s nomination bid in 2004? Iowa.
“None of the food farmed east of the Cascades makes it to Seattle”.
WTF?
If you’ve eaten an apple recently it may have come from China thanks to Republican economic policies.
Dave Reichert doesn’t care if your apple was picked by a political prisoner.
Michael @ 4
Excellent proposal. Having spent piles of time in Pend O’reille County and the adjacent Priest Lake, Idaho country (Priest River feeds the Pend O’reille River), all of which is spectacularly beautiful with moose and wolves still roaming, blowing up that dam would be something I’d be all for. The fishing would improve, the ecosystem would return to what it was–man, let’s do it.
Seattle sure didn’t suck Carnation dry this winter. Just the opposite.
@1 I don’t understand why the Utilities and Transportation Commission, which is chaired by Mark Sidran, gave PSE a 9% natural gas rate increase this winter.
Natural gas prices have fallen 50% since last summer.
——–
Because PSE costs may have been based on natural gas purchase agreements it had made earlier, perhaps in anticipation of prices going up, not down. The low prices we see today may be reflected in fees charged next winter.
At least you are admitting that democrats are buying votes with tax dollars.
Great idea.
It would increase the value of my property and screw the liberals in seattle that can’t produce electricity for themselves.
Have you ever been to that lake up by the boundary dam? Been around the bend to the waterfall? Beautiful!!!
15. You are such an greedy amoral republican. It’s not buying votes, it’s making sure our citizens don’t starve. Wait, Never mind, that doesn’t matter to you, if they even voted, they didn’t vote for your party. So it’s ok to let them and their families starve. Jesus only favors the rich anyway.
Stamm sez’: It would increase the value of my property and screw the liberals in seattle that can’t produce electricity for themselves.
Not really. Property values would go down. Absent cheap power, other costs would go up. Seattle could get by since we have an economy that actually, you know, produces things.
That area is truly a treasure, and I wouldn’t mind lending a helping hand and raising the payout a bit. In an energy starved future, learning to live small may be our only out.
Too bad Stamm put his meth lab there. Spokane not good enough for you?
At least you are admitting that democrats are buying votes with tax dollars.
Which is an implicit confession that republicans buy votes with tax dollars. Thanks for playing, Marvie!
google socialist paradise + pend oreille county gets 177 hits…..really strange stuff. I see there is now lots of way overpriced land in Bonner County now.
I still say that Pend Oreille County & northern Idaho should just secede from the Union. Who’d miss them?
Actually, I think ANY analysis of transportation tax dollars will show more money going out to rural districts than they collect. It’s simple math: miles or roadway/per resident is going to give a higher figure for the rural districts. Moreover, I would argue that there’s nothign wrong with that.
Any state or national economy which neglects its farming areas is in for big problems, eventually. People are born into the farming, timber, and mining industries, and when they move away from it there is a net loss of local expertise. Very few young people growing up in the cities or suburbs will ever decide to take up farming when they graduate from high school. The work is just too hard and frequently unpleasant to become an “acquired taste”.
But it’s not the outflow of money to Pend Oreille County that bothers us. It’s taking the money, asking for more, and then arguing that they are more “independent” and “self reliant” than the folks west of the mountains, and further trying to argue that it is they who are subsidizing Seattle, rather than the other way around.
@14 Don’t bet on it. Utility rates, like grocery prices, have a way of going up but not coming down. Besides, if PSE made bad business decisions, why should customers pay for it? That should fall on the shareholders.
@15 And Republicans aren’t? The campaign donors who gave the GOP $4 billion between 2000 and 2004 got $400 billion of tax breaks. That’s a 10,000% return on their money. The rest of us got deficits and inflation.
@22 “It’s taking the money, asking for more, and then arguing that they are more ‘independent’ and ‘self reliant’ than the folks west of the mountains, and further trying to argue that it is they who are subsidizing Seattle, rather than the other way around.”
What do you expect from hicks who know more about goat reproductive organs than public finance?
I suppose we could give POC to Idaho, but they would probably want to be paid to take it.
E Washington politicians (R’s) have been telling their constituents for years that Seattle libs are taking their money.
It’s just a cheap, populist political stunt designed to divert attention away from their own failures.
Actually, King County gets back more gas tax money than it donates once you figure in the federal monies. It’s really Pierce County that is getting screwed – donating $640,000,000 more in gas tax receipts than it received in WSDOT projects over the last 20 years. Piece County is expected to donate another $610,000,000 in the next 10 years. It’s why I-5’s HOV lanes stop at the King County line. (The Governor having cut the Pierce County HOV project in her recent budget proposal). By percentage, however, Whatcom County is the state’s biggest donor. So both Eastern Washington and Seattle should quit bitching.