Last year King County Executive Dow Constantine and the mayors of all the county's cities got together to determine what they needed to do to address the county's transportation funding shortfall. Their solution? A 1.5 percent motor vehicle excise tax (MVET) to be split 60/40 between Metro bus service and road maintenance. The road money, about $55 million a year, would be apportioned by population to the cities and unincorporated King County. The Metro money, about $85 million a year, would stave off a looming 17 percent cut in bus service.
This was the transportation funding solution agreed on by our local elected officials—the leaders who know our region's needs best—and this is what they collectively lobbied Olympia for during the legislative session: the authority to levy a 1.5 percent MVET. But apparently, Senate Transportation Committee Chair Curtis King—a Yakima Republican—thinks he knows better:
“The car tab, MVET [motor-vehicle excise tax] puts all of the monkey on the back of the person that wants to drive a car. . .” said King. “I think of transit as being more of a social issue, and a sales tax socializes that cost.”
And I think of Senator King as being more of a fucking douchebag.
Rather than giving King County the MVET authority it asked for, Senator King's transportation funding package would allow us to raise the sales tax 0.3 cents, if approved by voters. But our over-reliance on the sales tax is what put Metro in dire financial straits to begin with. Sales tax revenues plunged with the onset of the Great Recession. And since it taxes a base that is steadily shrinking as a portion of the overall economy—the sale of goods—the sales tax is inherently structurally deficient.
And of course, the sales tax is highly regressive compared to the MVET, a tax on the value of your car, which is arguably the most progressive tax available in Washington State.
Senator King's proposal is neither the tax King County wants nor needs to address its transportation funding problems. And King County legislators should tell Senator King to take his transportation funding package and go fuck himself. If the most populous and prosperous region of the state—the engine of our state economy—can't be allowed to tax itself to maintain its own transportation infrastructure, then rest of the state shouldn't be allowed to address its needs either. That is the line in the sand that King County's legislative delegation must draw: No MVET, no transportation funding package. Period.
Let Senator King and his Republican colleagues kill the Columbia River Crossing. That's not our delegation's battle. And let them reapportion revenue from new projects to deferred maintenance—that's probably good policy. But if they don't give us our MVET, fuck 'em.