Initiative 912 Fuel a Larger Transportation Debate
October 2005
I remember when my grandfather would talk about the "good old days" when a gallon of gas cost a quarter. That annoyed me. Now, when I fill up my car's gas tank, I long for the "good old days" when gas cost $2.00 a gallon. Life has its ironies.
Contrary to what you might hear, the debate over Initiative 912 is not about lingering animosity from the 2004 election, or a populist tax revolt, or about avoiding infrastructure collapse akin to what we saw recently in New Orleans. It is about transportation policy in Washington.
Washington began taxing gasoline in 1924 at the rate of two cents a gallon. Today that rate is 31 cents per gallon. The federal government taxes gas at 18.4 cents a gallon, making the combined gas tax in Washington 49.4 cents a gallon. Under the Legislature's plan, by 2008 Washingtonians will be paying a combined state and federal gas tax of 56 cents a gallon.
Opponents of I-912, which include many businesses and labor organizations and large businesses, say that the new gas tax will pay for badly needed projects like replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the 520 bridge. I-912 supporters, however, argue that lawmakers should not have enacted an $8.6 billion tax increase that does little to help people get where they need to go as quickly as possible. The projects financed by the new tax focus on infrastructure maintenance, not capacity expansion.
The real debate here is about how the Department of Transportation (DOT) spends our tax dollars. There are several reforms that would yield significant savings and improvements in efficiencies. The transportation performance audits authorized by the Legislature in April are an important start, but the most serious problems plaguing the DOT are structural and go beyond the scope of performance audits.
Those who argue that inflation has eroded the gas tax revenue's purchasing power need look no further than the prevailing wage laws and the sales tax on transportation materials to see many of the causes for that inflation. With these policies, the state pays inflated wages on construction projects and charges itself sales tax on materials used for those projects. Here transportation policy works against itself. Reforming both areas would bring significant savings.
Many Washingtonians would be surprised to hear that because of complicated environmental regulations, restrictive anti-growth laws, and bureaucratic slowdowns it can take longer to do the paperwork for a project than it does to actually build it.
Washington would also benefit from opening routine highway maintenance to competitive contracting. Other states have saved tens of millions of dollars doing this. By rewarding state employees for good work and incorporating the best innovations of the private sector, competitive contracting would boost morale and build a culture of excellence within the DOT.
The debate is not just about policy, but also purpose. Forty years ago the region embarked on a campaign of mass transit aimed at "getting people out of their cars." This approach has not worked. In the 1970s, mass transit accounted for six percent of daily trips in the region. Today it accounts for just four percent. We need a new direction, a policy based on increased capacity and more general purpose highway lanes.
We can go on insisting that the debate over I-912 is about past elections, a referendum on the governor, saving us all from earthquakes and preventing the sky from falling, or part of an anti-tax movement. In all of those points we would be wrong, for I-912 is really the latest edition of an ongoing debate between those who think it is time for serious transportation reform and those who want to keep doing business as usual in our state.