Senators: Get moving on transportation vote

Expressing frustration with three years of inaction, state senators from both parties yesterday introduced a bill to force the Regional Transportation Investment District (RTID) to put a package of projects and taxes on the November ballot.

"We've been talking about this issue long enough," said Senate Minority Leader Bill Finkbeiner, R-Kirkland, the bill's chief sponsor.

"We're at a crisis point in transportation," added co-sponsor Ken Jacobsen, D-Seattle.

The Legislature created the three-county RTID in 2002, expecting it would move quickly to present a plan to voters in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties to help pay for replacements for the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the Highway 520 bridge, more Interstate 405 lanes and other projects.

But the district's board has been stymied by divisions over what projects to build and which taxes to raise. Six of its seven members did agree on a $12.8 billion plan last spring, but they decided not to put it on the ballot after business leaders, fearing defeat, said they wouldn't finance a campaign.

Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce CEO Steve Leahy said business isn't any more inclined to bankroll a campaign now than it was a year ago — especially since the Legislature hasn't acted yet on the chamber's top priority, a statewide gas-tax increase.

But Finkbeiner said business shouldn't drive RTID's agenda. "I'm unsympathetic to the idea that we have to wait for someone else to tell us it's OK to get moving on this," he said.

Metropolitan King County Councilwoman Julia Patterson, D-SeaTac, an RTID board member, said she, too, would like to put a package on the November ballot. But she said the Legislature should focus on raising the gas tax to provide state money for the region's transportation needs rather than dictating to RTID.

Finkbeiner introduced his bill a day after the House approved and sent to the Senate legislation that renames RTID, alters the district boundaries, adds members to its board, and changes the projects and taxes it can propose — but doesn't tell it when to hold an election.

House Transportation Chairman Ed Murray, D-Seattle, said he's not sure the Legislature should make that call. Without the changes the House bill makes, he said, any RTID package is unlikely to win voter approval.

Patterson agreed. Murray's bill gives RTID needed flexibility, she said.

Finkbeiner's bill would give the RTID board until July 1 to adopt a plan. It says the November package must include a motor-vehicle excise tax of 0.3 percent, and directs that revenues from that tax collected in the urban parts of the three counties go to Sound Transit to help extend its Seattle light-rail line north to Northgate and south to SeaTac.

That should help blunt criticism that any RTID package would be too roads-heavy, Finkbeiner said.

Another provision, added at the request of Jacobsen, would prohibit the separately funded Seattle Monorail Project from selling bonds until voters approve an RTID plan. That would delay construction, said monorail board Chairman Tom Weeks.

"My intention is to get these guys stopped before it's too late," Jacobsen said. "They're out of control."

The transportation bill the House approved Monday by a 77-19 vote would add the three county executives to the board, now composed of county-council members, and would allow the package to include more transit projects.

It would shrink the maximum sales-tax increase the board could propose but would let it seek a larger motor-vehicle excise tax.

Times staff reporter Mike Lindblom contributed to this report. Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com