King County Council passes 3 new taxes

One week after voters rejected taxes for regional highway and rail-transit projects, King County Council members approved new taxes Tuesday for mental-health services, passenger ferries and improved flood protection.

The taxes add up to about $87 a year for a household that earns the county's median income and owns a median-priced home.

"This was an expensive day for King County taxpayers," said Councilmember Reagan Dunn, R-Maple Valley, who voted only for the anti-flood tax.

The Metropolitan King County Council also authorized a 25-cent increase in the cost of a Metro bus ride — the first raise in fares since 2001. Adult bus fares will increase in March; special fares, such as those for seniors and handicapped people, and Access-van fares will increase in July.

Dunn predicted the new taxes will make it more difficult to win voter approval of future highway and transit taxes. "The excess capacity that may have existed before today is gone," he said. "The ability to make those major infrastructure improvements has been gobbled up by these special-interest taxes."

Lobbyist and developer Jamie Durkan dubbed the three-tax day "Tax-hike Tuesday. ... I can't remember anything of this magnitude in 20 years. ... It seems totally contrary to what the voters' mandate was a week ago."

Durkan also predicted the taxes could produce significant pushback from voters that could affect future tax issues and elections of local and state officials.

Larry Phillips, D-Seattle, said he couldn't recall such a large tax increase "at one time" without a vote of the people during his 16 years on the council.

But, like other proponents of the new taxes, Phillips said they were needed to maintain "critical needs" once funded with federal and state money.

"Most of these are coming to us because of the failure to act by the state or federal government, particularly the mental-health tax," said Jane Hague, R-Bellevue.

Here are the new taxes:

• Property owners will pay a levy of 10 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation to rebuild the substandard levees that hold back floodwaters on rivers. The cost on a $400,000 home: $40 a year.

Hurricane Katrina, which depopulated New Orleans in 2005, was "a wake-up call" showing that "Mother Nature can deal a devastating blow to any area," Phillips said.

King County has been declared a federal disaster area eight times since 1990 because of floods along the Snoqualmie, Cedar and other rivers. A big flood in major manufacturing and warehousing areas along the Green and Cedar rivers would cause $46 million in economic losses per day, according to a county-commissioned study by ECONorthwest last month.

• The sales tax on most retail purchases will go up by one-tenth of a percentage point — or 1 cent on a $10 purchase — to pay for services for people with mental illness and addictions to drugs and alcohol. The cost to the typical household will be about $25 a year, according to county Budget Director Bob Cowan.

Several advocates of the tax objected to part of the ordinance that requires large providers to sign "partnership agreements" with a labor union before they can receive any of the tax money.

Jim Adams, president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness — South King County, called the labor clause "a bait-and-switch tactic." Diane Sosne, president of Service Employees International Union Local 1199NW, said workers who want union representation need protection against possible "heavy-handed tactics" by employers. Workers would have the right to reject unionization in a secret ballot, she said.

• A property levy of 5.5 cents per $1,000 assessed valuation will fund a ferry district that will operate the Vashon Island passenger ferry and the Elliott Bay Water Taxi and will pilot several other ferry routes. The tax will cost the owner of a $400,000 home $22 a year.

All five Democrats voted for all three taxes, except for Julia Patterson, who supported them all but was absent for the vote on the mental-health tax.

Dunn was the only Republican to oppose the ferry tax. Hague was the only Republican who voted for the mental-health tax, and she was the only GOP member who voted against the flood-control tax.

Hague had sought to cut the size of the flood tax in half and study how much money could be raised by a separate tax on residents of areas most threatened by flooding.

Cowan said the three new taxes represent the largest single-year tax increase in recent years that didn't require voter approval. Larger tax increases routinely occurred over larger time spans before 2000, when initiatives sponsored by activist Tim Eyman limited the size of unvoted increases, Cowan said.

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105