By all accounts Mayor Ed Murray is expected to ask the city council to send to the ballot a measure to buy back in-city Metro bus service cuts via a $60 car tab fee and tenth of a cent hike in the sales tax. Sound familiar? That’s the exact same tax that was rejected by King County voters last month in the form of Proposition 1, because it’s the exact same taxing authority also granted to the city via a transportation benefit district.
Call it Proposition 1.1.
I suppose this funding option is as good as any other, especially considering that Prop 1 passed here in Seattle. Even better, it’s Ed’s idea rather than Ben’s, so that means Prop 1.1 will enjoy Ed’s enthusiastic support. Which is fine. I don’t really care who gets the credit for things as long as good things get done. And buying back Metro bus service cuts is a good thing.
That said, I just can’t help but feeling a little wistful over the fact that just couple years ago Seattle voters rejected a similar car tab measure targeted toward expanding transit service—precious taxing authority we’ll now be using merely to preserve transit service. That’s not much of a step forward. Also, it is of course a shame that suburban and exurban Metro riders will be totally dicked over by these cuts. But what are we to do? Suffer in sympathy?
Let ’em walk to N. 145th St. You get what you pay for.
but but… when some journalist asked the mayor (or if he was ‘unavailable’ one of his most excellent minions):
..the reply was…?
1
OK.
@2 well since no one felt like slapping me upside-the-head, i’ll do it myself. i misunderstood that this rebooted prop-1 was going to be exactly re-presented to the entire county, (hence WTF?). As you-all know, but i didn’t (because i read a TheSlog posting which didn’t detail the matter), this reboot will be presented to Seattle voters only. and so, likely will pass. mea-culpa. (so it’s to be ‘regionalism’ decided within a much more narrowed region)
Unfortunately, the low-income people living in cheap rentals in Burien or Renton will still have their buses cut and may no longer be able to get up to Seattle to work at their hotel jobs. Hopefully they will realize who did this to them and go tip over the nice new cars of their town-mates who “couldn’t afford” a rise in car tabs.
You’d be surprised how many people who don’t own cars will vote against a car tab tax because Timmy Eyman tells them it’ll raise their taxes.
I do have my own beef against the car tab tax, though: It’s one of our most regressive and unfair taxes. It’s effectively a head tax that’s completely divorced from ability to pay. You pay $60 whether you drive a gold plater or a beater. You pay $60 whether you’re a $150k-a-year software guy racking up 75,000 miles a year or a senior citizen living on a $1200 monthly social security check and driving 120 miles a month to the supermarket and doctor’s office. And then there are people in border counties who evade it entirely by licensing their cars to phony addresses in Oregon or Idaho. It’s a bad tax, period, and activists who rely on it to fund things like transit are courting rejection at the ballot box. It isn’t the yuppies who are voting against this tax. It’s the women in tank tops and young men in work jeans lined up at the license renewal counter who are killing your transit dreams. They simply can’t afford the extra $60 or $120. At some point, you’ve got to stop taking money from people who don’t have money, or they’re going to turn on you in a big way.
Of course, Republicans don’t want to fix our broken tax system. It’s a Republican’s dream. Our regressive tax system creates more anti-tax activists and Republican voters than they could ever hope to get on their own. Who goes to Tea Party rallies? Not the rich.
Seattle doesn’t give a rip about preserving its precious taxing authority. If it did, the Mayor and Seattle City Council would not try to ram a new Metropolitan Parks District down voters’ throats at a time when bus service is on the chopping block. If approved, the MPD is approved will add HUNDREDS of dollars a year to the average property owner’s tax bill, whereas a car tab fee would cost only an extra $60 for people who own cars.
While better maintained parks are in the “nice to have” category, bus service is absolutely vital for average working people and Seattle residents who don’t own cars. I’d gladly support kicking in an extra $60 per year to help people get to work, but I am dead set against Seattle sucking up a huge amount of our taxing authority by creating an even more distant, unaccountable, poorly managed parks authority than SPDR, which IMHO is the worst managed department within the City of Seattle.
More money for buses: yes. More money for parks: no.
@9 Any reason why downtown business shouldn’t kick in money for buses? It’s their workforce the buses transport to downtown. It’s they who need the buses. And they can afford to pay. Oh man, they can afford it. Those downtown businesses are rich, rich, rich. They got that way because the proles pay for everything that makes them rich. They pay for nothing. Isn’t it time for that to change?