Locke Weighs Fourth Session

The Legislature will likely be called back to Olympia to deal yet again with transportation problems.

But it may only be asked to give local communities a way to handle their problems without a statewide hike in the gas tax, Gov. Gary Locke said Thursday.

The day after the Legislature’s third special session dissolved in a round of partisan recriminations, Locke said there was a commitment to return for at least a partial fix.

”We’ve got some major problems with people understanding transportation,” he told the Spokesman-Review editorial board. ”You can’t have it if you don’t pay for it.”

He disputed the claim of House Republicans and their allies that the state should make the Transportation Department more efficient before raising the gas tax.

Gary Stranigan, a former legislator who heads the Washington State Citizens for a Sound Economy, said Thursday that House Republicans ”stood firm in their negotiations for efficiency improvements.”

But Locke countered that the Legislature had already passed the efficiency recommendations of a special transportation commission. Those allow large projects to be designed and built by private companies at a fixed price. New laws have also streamlined the process to get permits for road projects, he said.

Previous audits have found possible savings of 3 percent or less in the department’s $1 billion annual budget, he said.

”They have not found hundreds of millions of dollars of waste,” Locke said.

The governor acknowledged, however, that he had changed his mind on a commitment made early this year to put a gas tax increase on the ballot. House Republicans demanded a public vote on any gas tax increase in exchange for legislative votes for the transportation package.

”A lot of things have changed,” Locke said of his opposition to putting a gas tax hike on the ballot.

Boeing has moved its corporate headquarters to Chicago and continues to warn about problems with transportation gridlock, he said. Other companies also say they are looking out of state to expand. This spring’s earthquake caused significant damage to the Alaskan Way Viaduct and some other roadways.

Business groups said they were not willing to fund a campaign to sell a tax increase to the voters, Locke said. Without a campaign, a ballot measure would lose.

”We have to have the political courage to do this,” he said.

The proposal supported by Locke, leaders of both parties in the state Senate and House Democratic leaders called for a 3-cent increase in the gas tax each year for the next three years. It also would have placed a sales-tax surcharge on new and used vehicles and increased trucking fees.

House Republicans countered with an increase of 6 cents over two years and lower levels for the other taxes and fees. But that too had to be put on the ballot, they said.

Both proposals contained sections that would allow cities, counties or other regional districts to propose their own taxes to fund projects that address local problems. All sides agreed that those taxes had to be approved by voters.

Negotiators will work on a proposal that would allow local governments to plan and build projects with locally approved taxes, Locke said. He wouldn’t predict how long that would take.

While he hasn’t given up on a statewide plan to handle transportation problems, he refused to predict when, or even if, it could resurface.

”We’ll just have to see what we can put together,” he said.