Washington has always trusted an expert commission to set tolls — why change that?

Hav­ing been in the busi­ness of sell­ing ini­tia­tives for more than a decade (and pos­sess­ing a gift for media manip­u­la­tion) Tim Eyman has become a mas­ter snake oil sales­man. Every year, he devel­ops a remark­ably slick (yet shal­low) sales pitch for his lat­est ini­tia­tive. This year’s sales pitch has stressed a com­fort­ing theme — con­ti­nu­ity. Eyman has been claim­ing right out of the gate in debates and pub­lic forums that I‑1125 just keeps things the way they’ve always been.

The longer ver­sion of his talk­ing point goes some­thing like this:

I‑1125 ensures that tolls are set and col­lect­ed just the way they’ve always been, keep­ing one hun­dred-year old pro­tec­tions in place that keep project costs from get­ting out of control. 

These aren’t Eyman’s exact words, but the above para­graph comes pret­ty close to what we’ve seen in Eyman’s fre­quent emails to sup­port­ers and the press.

What’s disin­gen­u­ous about Eyman’s claim is that I‑1125, if imple­ment­ed, would actu­al­ly require the state to aban­don an impor­tant tra­di­tion, rather than keep it. See, for decades and decades, we’ve always trust­ed an expert com­mis­sion to set toll rates. These days, it’s the Wash­ing­ton State Trans­porta­tion Commission.

But it used to be the Wash­ing­ton Toll Bridge Author­i­ty.

Accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion, which took over WTAB’s respon­si­bil­i­ties when the Author­i­ty was dis­solved in 1977, WTAB “main­tained full author­i­ty to set the toll rates from their incep­tion until it dis­band­ed.” There­after, the Wash­ing­ton State Trans­porta­tion Com­mis­sion gained the pow­er to set tolls and fer­ry fares.

The Toll Bridge Author­i­ty exist­ed for near­ly half a cen­tu­ry. It was cre­at­ed by House Bill 506, an act of the Leg­is­la­ture in the 1937 leg­isla­tive ses­sion. H.B. 506 was intro­duced on Feb­ru­ary 12th, 1937, and passed by the Sen­ate on March 9th, 1937. It was signed by Gov­er­nor Clarence Mar­tin short­ly thereafter.

H.B. 506 was part of the Leg­is­la­ture’s effort to estab­lish a uni­form high­way code. Up until that time, laws gov­ern­ing high­ways had been passed as need­ed; there was no coor­di­nat­ed or con­sis­tent set of reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing highways.

The Toll Bridge Author­i­ty’s ini­tial mem­bers were:

• Gov­er­nor Clarence Martin
• Lacey V. Mur­row, then the state’s Direc­tor of the Depart­ment of High­ways. (One of the I‑90 spans across Lake Wash­ing­ton is named for Murrow).
• Olaf L. Olsen, Direc­tor of the Depart­ment of Finance
• Ferd J. Schaaf, Direc­tor of the Depart­ment of Pub­lic Service

The Author­i­ty’s pow­ers actu­al­ly went far beyond set­ting toll rates — it was in charge of financ­ing, design­ing, and con­struct­ing bridges as well. A Unit­ed Press arti­cle on the pas­sage of H.B. 506 was appro­pri­ate­ly head­lined, “State goes into bridge busi­ness.” The author­i­ty’s first major projects were the Taco­ma Nar­rows Bridge and the first float­ing bridge over Lake Washington.

In 1951, the Leg­is­la­ture cre­at­ed anoth­er body, the High­way Com­mis­sion, con­sist­ing of five mem­bers, all appoint­ed by the gov­er­nor (but sub­ject to Sen­ate con­fir­ma­tion). The High­way Com­mis­sion, the Depart­ment of High­ways, and the Toll Bridge Author­i­ty coex­ist­ed with each oth­er for some twen­ty-five years, until 1977, when the Depart­ment of High­ways mor­phed into the Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion and the High­way Com­mis­sion became the Trans­porta­tion Commission.

A few years lat­er, in 1984, the Leg­is­la­ture trans­ferred the Toll Bridge Author­i­ty’s pow­ers and respon­si­bil­i­ties to WSDOT and the Trans­porta­tion Com­mis­sion, and the Author­i­ty was disbanded.

Why is this his­to­ry rel­e­vant? Well, again, it shows that Wash­ing­ton has always trust­ed an expert com­mis­sion to set toll rates.

Here is what Tim Eyman does­n’t want you to know: The mod­ern Trans­porta­tion Com­mis­sion is actu­al­ly com­prised of knowl­edge­able cit­i­zens, not “unelect­ed bureau­crats”, as he has claimed. Most of the com­mis­sion­ers have expe­ri­ence in both the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors — they were appoint­ed to serve on the com­mis­sion because they know some­thing about transportation.

Eyman likes to por­tray them as a face­less, name­less group so he can put them down more eas­i­ly. He acts as if he knows more about trans­porta­tion plan­ning than they do, when in fact, the truth is just the opposite.

The sev­en mem­bers of Wash­ing­ton’s Trans­porta­tion Com­mis­sion are as fol­lows:

• Dick Ford, Chair. From King Coun­ty. Cur­rent­ly senior coun­sel at the law firm K&L Gates. Pre­vi­ous­ly served as exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Port of Seat­tle. Has served on many local and region­al trans­porta­tion boards.
• Philip Park­er, Vice Chair. From Clark Coun­ty. He is a retired Jour­ney­man Elec­tri­cian. Has rep­re­sent­ed Greater Van­cou­ver on many local boards tasked with look­ing at work­force devel­op­ment and trans­porta­tion issues.
• Tom Cow­an. From San Jan Coun­ty. He is a pub­lic pol­i­cy con­sul­tant. Pre­vi­ous­ly ran the North­west Straits Com­mis­sion and served as San Juan Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er for twelve years. Dur­ing his tenure, he also served as Pres­i­dent of the Wash­ing­ton Asso­ci­a­tion of Counties.
• Dan O’Neal. From Mason Coun­ty. Serves on the board of Green­bri­er Com­pa­nies, a pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny that leas­es and man­u­fac­tures rail­road cars. Pre­vi­ous­ly served as Chair­man of the Inter­state Com­merce Com­mis­sion and Trans­porta­tion Coun­sel to the U.S. Sen­ate’s Com­merce Committee.
• Anne Haley. From Wal­la Wal­la Coun­ty. Has three decades’ worth of expe­ri­ence in man­ag­ing pub­lic libraries. Has also served on a vari­ety of boards and com­mis­sions, both at the state and local levels.
• Jer­ry Litt. From Dou­glas Coun­ty. The past pres­i­dent of the Wash­ing­ton Coun­ty and Region­al Plan­ning Direc­tors’ Asso­ci­a­tion. Served the City of Lacey as its Direc­tor of Plan­ning for thir­teen years before mov­ing to east­ern Wash­ing­ton. Helped devel­op the Apple Cap­i­tal Loop Trail.
• Joe Tor­torel­li. From Spokane Coun­ty. A life­long res­i­dent of the Lilac City who loves to cycle and ski. He is an eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment con­sul­tant. Pre­vi­ous­ly served on the Spokane Region­al Trans­porta­tion Council’s Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee and on the board of the Spokane Area Good Roads Association.

The biogra­phies above are short­ened ver­sions the ones on the com­mis­sion’s site.

The Trans­porta­tion Com­mis­sion takes its oblig­a­tions seri­ous­ly. Its mem­bers do a lot of trav­el­ing around the state so they can hear from com­mu­ni­ties in every cor­ner of Wash­ing­ton; they don’t just hold meet­ings in Olympia. Gath­er­ing pub­lic input is one of the com­mis­sion’s top pri­or­i­ties (for instance, it spon­sors the Fer­ry Rid­ers’ Opin­ion Group). Just because the com­mis­sion­ers don’t have to run for reelec­tion does­n’t mean they’re not account­able or accessible.

Sev­er­al read­ers and reporters have asked us why Eyman keeps pick­ing on the Trans­porta­tion Com­mis­sion. Since he despis­es the Leg­is­la­ture so much, why does he want the Leg­is­la­ture set­ting tolls? What’s wrong with law­mak­ers del­e­gat­ing their toll-set­ting author­i­ty to inde­pen­dent com­mis­sion com­prised of experts?

We think the answer to that ques­tion is that Eyman wants to politi­cize tolling deci­sions. Eyman has nev­er been inter­est­ed in good pub­lic pol­i­cy. What he is inter­est­ed in is destroy­ing pub­lic ser­vices and wreck­ing gov­ern­ment. Attack­ing elect­ed offi­cials is his favorite pas­time. If law­mak­ers have to take a vote every time a toll needs adjust­ing, that poten­tial­ly gives Eyman fod­der for future ini­tia­tives — and it gives Repub­li­can oper­a­tives more fod­der for attack ads dur­ing cam­paign season.

The last thing our state needs is anoth­er self-serv­ing Eyman initiative.

The peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton State have con­sis­tent­ly vot­ed over the years to entrust impor­tant respon­si­bil­i­ties to expert com­mis­sions. Exam­ples include the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion (respon­si­ble for enforc­ing cam­paign finance laws) and the Redis­trict­ing Com­mis­sion (charged with redraw­ing the bound­aries of leg­isla­tive and con­gres­sion­al dis­tricts every ten years).

Eyman has tried to make it sound like peo­ple are clam­or­ing for the Trans­porta­tion Com­mis­sion’s author­i­ty to be tak­en away.

But that’s not the case. When the Leg­is­la­ture vot­ed dur­ing the 2011 leg­isla­tive ses­sion to re-empow­er the Com­mis­sion to set tolls, there was no pub­lic out­cry. There was only an Eyman nastygram.

I‑1125 would­n’t even be on our bal­lots except for Kem­per Free­man Jr.‘s mon­ey. Even the Yes on 1125 web­site, writ­ten by Kem­per’s oper­a­tives, admits that Kem­per paid for the I‑1125 sig­na­ture dri­ve.

If I‑1125 goes into effect, it will need­less­ly end our long tra­di­tion of hav­ing an expert com­mis­sion set tolls, which will affect Wash­ing­ton State’s bor­row­ing costs. (The state has long been plan­ning to sell bonds secured by toll rev­enue to finance crit­i­cal high­way projects, as oth­er states rou­tine­ly do).

As long as the Trans­porta­tion Com­mis­sion is in charge of toll-set­ting, bor­row­ing costs stay low. But if I‑1125 goes through, it would raise our bor­row­ing costs, jeop­ar­diz­ing plans for the new SR 520 span and the Colum­bia Riv­er Crossing.

By reject­ing I‑1125, we can keep crit­i­cal projects on track and assure bond­hold­ers that future adjust­ments to toll rates won’t be made in a polit­i­cal­ly charged envi­ron­ment. Join us in vot­ing NO on Tim Eyman’s I‑1125 start­ing next week. Keep our roads safe, and keep Wash­ing­ton rolling.