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PI.Com: Connelly's Half Right About Transportation Taxes
Update: Several readers have pointed out (and the Seattle Transit Blog has noted) that the city does issue an annual report on how Bridging the Gap dollars are being spent. You can read the most recent one here
.)
Over at the PI.com, Joel Connelly has a column today riffing on some reporting I did last week: The city council and mayor have appointed a 12-member commission to recommend how the city should spend a new $20 vehicle-license fee and to come up with a ballot proposal for new transportation taxes and fees. Those taxes, which would help pay for everything from fixing potholes to building sidewalks to improving the streets for bikes and transit, could include a property tax, a sales tax, more license fees (up to a total of $100), and tolls on city streets.
For the most part, (shockingly!) I agree with Connelly (and not just because he credits my reporting): The city is fortunate that Seattle voters tend to be generous with our tax dollars, but it would be nice to have some accountability in return. The city, Connelly writes, "needs an accounting of how Bridging the Gap bucks have been spent. Voters need to see what higher taxes delivered -- or didn't deliver."
Connelly's also right that Mayor Mike McGinn's appointees to the citizens' advisory group that will make the recommendations look an awful lot like the crowd he's surrounded himself with since his election last year: A who's who of campaign contributors, including representatives of the Sierra Club and Cascade Bicycle Club. McGinn should have broadened that group to include not just allies but representatives of groups that didn't support him, including industrial and business folks. (His nominees do include one representative of organized labor, carpenters' union leader John Littel, who contributed to McGinn opponent Joe Mallahan and gave to McGinn only after the election).
Two quibbles with Connelly's analysis: First, it's not fair to blame the city for the failure of Bridging the Gap, the property-tax measure that passed in 2006, to fund all the street improvements the city initially planned. For that, blame the lousy economy---property taxes, like sales taxes, haven't lived up to expectations as property values have stagnated. Sound Transit is facing a similar problem, as shortfalls in sales tax revenues have forced the agency to suspend parts of the voter-approved Sound Transit II proposal. Voters shouldn't reject transportation funding based on the fact that the economy has foundered.
Additionally, I think Connelly gets a little too worked up about the prospect of an August ballot measure. First, as I reported, it isn't likely to happen: The 12-member advisory group has just started working on its proposal for the initial $20, and would have to drastically accelerate its schedule to come up with a ballot proposal by the June deadline.
Second, Connelly's assertion that the city would be "sneak[ing] through a costly plan or introduc[ing] unpopular stuff like tolls on city streets" by putting the measure on the ballot in August, not November, is misleading. Primary voters tend to be more politically aware, and more conservative (translation: anti-tax) than the larger group that votes in general elections, which would argue against Connelly's "sneak it through unawares" theory.
And as even council member Mike O'Brien, an early proponent of tolling city streets, has said, tolling won't work in most of the city, where the grid system makes it easy to avoid a tolled street by taking a parallel route instead.
Over at the PI.com, Joel Connelly has a column today riffing on some reporting I did last week: The city council and mayor have appointed a 12-member commission to recommend how the city should spend a new $20 vehicle-license fee and to come up with a ballot proposal for new transportation taxes and fees. Those taxes, which would help pay for everything from fixing potholes to building sidewalks to improving the streets for bikes and transit, could include a property tax, a sales tax, more license fees (up to a total of $100), and tolls on city streets.
For the most part, (shockingly!) I agree with Connelly (and not just because he credits my reporting): The city is fortunate that Seattle voters tend to be generous with our tax dollars, but it would be nice to have some accountability in return. The city, Connelly writes, "needs an accounting of how Bridging the Gap bucks have been spent. Voters need to see what higher taxes delivered -- or didn't deliver."
Connelly's also right that Mayor Mike McGinn's appointees to the citizens' advisory group that will make the recommendations look an awful lot like the crowd he's surrounded himself with since his election last year: A who's who of campaign contributors, including representatives of the Sierra Club and Cascade Bicycle Club. McGinn should have broadened that group to include not just allies but representatives of groups that didn't support him, including industrial and business folks. (His nominees do include one representative of organized labor, carpenters' union leader John Littel, who contributed to McGinn opponent Joe Mallahan and gave to McGinn only after the election).
Two quibbles with Connelly's analysis: First, it's not fair to blame the city for the failure of Bridging the Gap, the property-tax measure that passed in 2006, to fund all the street improvements the city initially planned. For that, blame the lousy economy---property taxes, like sales taxes, haven't lived up to expectations as property values have stagnated. Sound Transit is facing a similar problem, as shortfalls in sales tax revenues have forced the agency to suspend parts of the voter-approved Sound Transit II proposal. Voters shouldn't reject transportation funding based on the fact that the economy has foundered.
Additionally, I think Connelly gets a little too worked up about the prospect of an August ballot measure. First, as I reported, it isn't likely to happen: The 12-member advisory group has just started working on its proposal for the initial $20, and would have to drastically accelerate its schedule to come up with a ballot proposal by the June deadline.
Second, Connelly's assertion that the city would be "sneak[ing] through a costly plan or introduc[ing] unpopular stuff like tolls on city streets" by putting the measure on the ballot in August, not November, is misleading. Primary voters tend to be more politically aware, and more conservative (translation: anti-tax) than the larger group that votes in general elections, which would argue against Connelly's "sneak it through unawares" theory.
And as even council member Mike O'Brien, an early proponent of tolling city streets, has said, tolling won't work in most of the city, where the grid system makes it easy to avoid a tolled street by taking a parallel route instead.
