Warning signs for the fall; a sneaky tax

A region swishing around like liquid in a test tube is getting ready for the crystallization coming with the fall elections. We'll know more about the mood of the place after this coming Tuesday's primary vote, and a lot more about our common future after the first Tuesday in November.

This early, major themes are emerging from the run-up to the primary election and a few of them, like rust-colored leaves in August, are easy to spot. Here're some high points to watch: • Tolling just got legitimate. Federal money coming to the Highway 520 floating bridge rebuild includes tolls, a relief in some ways for local legislators who can now point to the feds as the culprits for restoring tolls to the corridor.

Engineers say tolling 520 doesn't make too much sense without tolling the Interstate 90 bridge, too, but so far, the politicians are not touting the obvious. Some kind of congestion pricing or toll lanes or car transponders are in the future — nearer than we think.

Antagonism toward tolls is obvious and vocal, but a federal leash on bridge money gives every officeholder in the state an out, and watch them use it.

The always-creative Cascadia Center in Seattle has leaped on the aging problems of Interstate 5 by proposing an entirely different approach to both the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement and a reconfigured I-5. The think tank is touting an inland bypass tunnel to replace the viaduct away from the seawall, and reconfiguring I-5 to connect with an integrated tolling system.

Cascadia, which often offers imaginative solutions on paper but lacks the ability to govern, suggests tolling the north-south express lanes on I-5 to Northgate as part of a larger, grander tolling regime for the region.

Every analyst sitting at every coffee shop sees the impacts of the I-5 construction and the bridges/tolling debates as a different way to interpret the region's huge roads-and-transit vote in November.

Polls show early acceptance, but the nearer we get, the less confident I am that the region has a clear understanding of what is actually ahead — and for the billions of dollars they are asking, it better be a totally integrated, thoroughly vetted plan that pulls us away from the logjam politics that have helped congest our roads.

• Voters should also pay attention to The Times editorial opinion on the fourth page of this section about an obscure change in state law that turns temporary taxes into permanent ones. Instead of asking for a four- or six-year levy increase on your property taxes, the new law takes the opposite view — that taxes are permanent unless they are specifically noted as temporary. It turns the approval of a levy from something voters see as binding for a few years into a perpetual tax that can be renewed, but at always higher levels.

King County Assessor Scott Noble told editorial writer Bruce Ramsey that his review of 11 levies on the ballot for King County shows that none have the language necessary to make them temporary taxes. A full explanation can be found under the editorial headline, "Warning: New taxes will be permanent."

James F. Vesely's column appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: jvesely@seattletimes.com for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to Opinion at seattletimes.com