Transportation plan might not make '04 ballot

By Eric Pryne
Seattle Times staff reporter

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Some regional leaders are stepping back from plans to put a big transportation package on the ballot next year, in part because of growing doubts about whether voters would approve a sales-tax increase to pay for most of it.

A new poll highlights that concern. Of 500 voters in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties who were surveyed late last month, just 43 percent said they would vote for a transportation package that included a half-penny sales-tax increase.

Fifty-three percent said they would vote "no."

A sales-tax increase finished dead last among five potential transportation-revenue sources tested in the poll, instigated by the three-county Regional Transportation Investment District and paid for by business, labor and environmentalists.

"Any realist has got to ask whether it's possible to do this with the sales tax," said state Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald.

The regional district's seven-member board had planned to adopt a draft project list, a major milestone, in Tacoma tomorrow. That's unlikely now, several board members say, in part because they want more time to digest the poll results.

An election next fall — still the board's official goal — also is increasingly in doubt. Veteran Seattle political consultant Ron Dotzauer, hired by Pierce County and the Port of Tacoma to analyze the political landscape, said yesterday he has told county officials "it would be a difficult task to go for a November '04 ballot."

Among the challenges, Dotzauer said, are continuing divisions among board members and key interest groups over what to include in the package, and the prospect of a statewide education-funding initiative that also may propose a sales-tax increase.

The sales tax was the chief revenue source the Legislature gave the regional district when it created the panel last year. In September the district's board tentatively endorsed a $14.1 billion tax package that included a 0.4 percentage-point sales-tax increase, a $75 annual vehicle-license fee, a 0.3 percent motor-vehicle excise tax and a 2.8-cent regional gas tax. The sales tax accounted for more than half the projected revenue.

But Snohomish County Councilman Gary Nelson, R-Edmonds, board chairman, said yesterday that, in light of the poll and other recent public-opinion research, the board may ask the Legislature for other tax options.

"People have a hard time identifying a general sales-tax increase with roads," Nelson said.

Extending the sales tax to gasoline and other motor-vehicle fuels is one possibility worth exploring, Nelson added.

But waiting for the Legislature to act next year makes a fall 2004 election problematic. To provide time for an effective campaign, Nelson said, a package would have to clear both the district's board and its 25-member planning committee by March.

Metropolitan King County Councilwoman Julia Patterson, D-SeaTac, a board alternate, said a 2004 vote is possible but would require "a lot of hard work and goodwill."

She also said board members must work with the business, labor and environmental leaders who helped design the just-completed poll and who would be counted on to back a campaign.

The board has been divided over the size and makeup of the package and especially over whether to include money to extend Sound Transit's planned Seattle light-rail line north to Northgate and south to SeaTac.

Funding rail isn't permitted under the authorizing legislation.

The poll, conducted by pollsters Don McDonough, a Democrat, and Bob Moore, a Republican, was Patterson's idea, an effort to gauge voter opinion and give the board direction.

The answers aren't always clear-cut. In one pair of questions asked early in the survey, support for a package dips slightly — from 58 percent to 54 percent — if it includes light rail. But later in the poll, in response to similar questions, light rail boosts support for the package from 55 percent to 61 percent.

When asked about specific projects, 63 percent said it's important to include light rail to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in the package — a higher level of support than any other King County project.

Most said they were more likely to support a package with a 60-40 mix of road and transit projects than one with a 90-10 ratio. But, when asked if roads or transit should be cut to make the package smaller, a plurality said transit should be trimmed.

Those polled split evenly — 47 percent to 47 percent — on whether they would vote for a transportation package with an unspecified sales-tax increase if an education initiative with a sales-tax boost is on the same ballot. "If education is on the ballot, I don't think it makes sense for us to be on the ballot together," said Snohomish County Councilman Dave Gossett.

Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231

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