Hardheaded advice from Murray, Larsen

Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Rick Larsen had a message of limits for city and regional leaders yesterday. The $220 million contribution for replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct, plus smaller contributions for other transportation projects, is all the federal money there is, or is going to be, for half a decade.

The appropriation is in a five-year bill that covers big projects through 2009. The message was: Don't ask for more next year and don't think up any big new projects. "We have to be realistic," Murray said. "We are at war, and discretionary programs are very difficult to fund."

What does this mean? For the Seattle Monorail Project, which has hoped for federal money down the road, it means no money until the Green Line is built and financed, which may be never. For Sound Transit, which already has been awarded $500 million for the first 14 miles of light rail, it means no additional federal commitments until 2009.

For the viaduct, it means that the $220 million recently announced is all the federal money there is. Larsen said it is the largest grant in the bill's national list of big projects, and that he went to bed happy the night the delegation won it. But it is only one-fifth of the $1 billion local officials had been hoping for to help pay for a waterfront tunnel.

Meanwhile, the state has agreed to pay $2 billion for either a new viaduct or a tunnel. Had the federal government contributed the billion promoters dreamed about, the tunnel project would have 73 percent of the money needed, using the high estimate of costs. Instead, the tunnel is just 54-percent funded.

"If Seattle wants a tunnel," our senator says, "it will have to find the money in the local tax base." The difference between a new tunnel and a new viaduct — $1 billion — is a high mountain to climb.

There is also the matter of Initiative 912 coming to the November ballot, which offers taxpayers a chance to slide back down the mountain by repealing the 9.5-cent increase in the gasoline tax. Murray has been accused of threatening voters by saying that if they take away the state's viaduct money by passing I-912, the federal money may go away also.

This is not a threat, but a description of how matching grants work. Without the new gas tax, there is no tunnel or new viaduct.

It reminds us of the old rule that if you don't pay for it, you can't have it. People pay lip service to that rule, even while allowing their enthusiasms to obscure it. Still, it applies. We have conflicting priorities, and it shows in Washington, D.C.