Will,

No, there really isn't a better way because every time the legislature comes up with a way to pay for roads a referendum comes along and slashes the funding. It gets cut and cut and cut. Now some things need fixing, 270 plus projects all across the state, and the money isn't there. The Department of Transportation has even done a good job with the money raised from the last limited transportation tax, which you can hear straight from the mouth of a Republican state legislator whose vote for the 9.5 cent gas tax was her first vote since 1994 for any kind of tax increase.

If you've looked into the state of our local roads, then you should realize that this is an emergency. The backers of I-912 are never going to meet a tax they like and while some sit around with pie-in-the-sky dreams of the perfect funding measure which will make everyone happy, lives and livelihoods are being put at risk. Transportation has been underfunded for years and the state has to start somewhere.

best,
n

Will responds

Natasha,

Good links and points, as usual. But the point remains that that pesky clause 'protecting' the tax from recall is unconstitutional. That alone is enough reason to yank it by voting for I-912.

Yes, we have a bona fide transportation emergency here in Washington, but fixing it by compounding our errors is not part of the solution, it's part of the problem.

Take it away, Natasha

Will,

Sure, that sounds fine. We'll just put it off another whole year, or two. Heck, let's wait another five years until the 520 bridge is about ready to be knocked over with a feather. And surely we won't be unlucky enough to have any earthquakes or big storms while we're waiting around for a piece of perfect legislation to be passed and the price of fuel to go back to a dollar a gallon.

Maybe the whole state can cross its fingers in unison once yearly to keep the bad luck away until we make up our minds.

Really, I don't know what you expect the state legislators to do. Even when bridges are getting ready to fall on people's heads, the funding to fix them is subjected to this sort of knee-jerk public attack. When they use their perfectly legal constitutional right to declare a bill an emergency measure, your response is to ignore the warnings they've acted on and wrongly accuse them of overstepping their authority.

It seems obvious to me that I-912 would be on the ballot whether or not they'd used their emergency authority because some people just don't want to pay for the roads they use or get their goods by, end of story. At this point, you're basically admitting that we really do need to fix these things, which is halfway to admitting that we really need to pay for the work.

Lives are at stake and I think you know as well as I do that if the legislature had done something illegal in this, Tim Eyman or some merry band of twits would already be preparing their court briefs. Meanwhile, our roads are still crumbling, maybe you and Garrett can pave them with freedom.

-Natasha

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