Curtis King’s response to Governor Inslee’s transportation plan is devoid of substance

With the upcom­ing long ses­sion of the six­ty-fourth Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture set to begin in a week, The Seat­tle Times has opt­ed to devote a por­tion of its edi­to­r­i­al page to com­men­tary on state issues, instead of the usu­al syn­di­cat­ed fare.

Read­ers of this morn­ing’s paper may have noticed that the Times invit­ed the chairs of the House and the Sen­ate’s respec­tive trans­porta­tion com­mit­tees to weigh in on Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee’s trans­porta­tion plan. Though the two op-eds appeared next to each oth­er and were about the same height, that’s about all they had in common.

The longer col­umn on the right, penned by Judy Clib­born (D‑41st Dis­trict) was filled with sen­si­ble argu­ments and obser­va­tions. In par­tic­u­lar, her remarks on giv­ing Sound Tran­sit new rev­enue author­i­ty (which is part of Gov­er­nor Inslee’s pro­pos­al) stood out to us as extreme­ly compelling:

The oth­er sig­nif­i­cant trans­porta­tion issue this leg­isla­tive ses­sion will be autho­riz­ing Sound Tran­sit to pur­sue its new long-range plan. There is a hunger around Puget Sound for new invest­ments in pub­lic trans­porta­tion that bridge the gaps between com­mu­ni­ties, includ­ing the expan­sion of express bus lines, light rail and Sounder trains. These sys­tems not only pro­vide a valu­able ser­vice for the pas­sen­gers who ride them dai­ly to work and school but also ben­e­fit those who dri­ve by keep­ing cars off the road and reduc­ing gridlock.

Autho­riz­ing this new author­i­ty is a mat­ter of local con­trol. The Leg­is­la­ture would sim­ply be allow­ing the peo­ple of Puget Sound to decide at the bal­lot box if they want as much as $15 bil­lion in new pub­lic trans­porta­tion invest­ments, such as light rail to com­mu­ni­ties such as Fed­er­al Way, Everett or Redmond.

If approved by the vot­ers, the rev­enue would be raised from local fees and tax­es, mean­ing there would be no tax or oth­er cost to res­i­dents in the rest of the state — only a ben­e­fit in the form of less grid­lock and a friend­lier busi­ness climate.

We agree. The Leg­is­la­ture needs to empow­er Sound Tran­sit to con­tin­ue build­ing the rail spine that our region so bad­ly needs. Uni­ver­si­ty Link and Angle Lake Link are com­ing online next year, and North and East Link will fol­low in the years after, but those exten­sions aren’t enough. We need more rail with­in Seat­tle link­ing its neigh­bor­hoods togeth­er (West Seat­tle and Bal­lard come to mind) plus rail that links sub­urbs like Fed­er­al Way and Fife to Seat­tle and Taco­ma as well as each other.

Read­ing Clib­born’s op-ed, it’s clear that she and the House Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus  under­stand what needs to hap­pen this ses­sion. They’re ready to get to work.

But, judg­ing by the con­tent of Sen­a­tor Cur­tis King’s short­er col­umn (which ran to the left of Clib­born’s piece) it appears Sen­ate Repub­li­cans are not.

Though King’s col­umn clocks in at six hun­dred and ten words, it is almost com­plete­ly devoid of sub­stance. Con­sid­er King’s open­ing paragraph:

When Gov. Jay Inslee pro­posed his new state trans­porta­tion pack­age in mid-Decem­ber, it was billed as an effort to spark dis­cus­sion. While the pro­pos­al has cer­tain­ly inspired con­ver­sa­tion, those of us who have been knee-deep in trans­porta­tion dis­cus­sions dur­ing the last two years weren’t caught off guard by much of what was presented.

Now, con­trast that with Clib­born’s opening:

Trans­porta­tion this ses­sion is about build­ing a bet­ter future for Wash­ing­ton, and pri­or­i­ty No. 1 is pass­ing a crit­i­cal­ly need­ed trans­porta­tion invest­ment package.

See the dif­fer­ence? King wastes space stat­ing the obvi­ous, while Clib­born cuts to the chase and says, in just a few words, what it is that needs to be done. Then she imme­di­ate­ly begins lay­ing out her ratio­nale for action.

Not King, though. He goes on to claim:

As antic­i­pat­ed, Inslee’s project list pro­vides amply for King Coun­ty and much less so around the rest of the state.

Giv­en that King Coun­ty is home to a third of the state’s pop­u­la­tion and has to put up with the worst grid­lock, it should­n’t be sur­pris­ing that Inslee’s project list pro­vides amply for King Coun­ty. It would be flawed if it didn’t!

King seems to be infer­ring that the gov­er­nor is ignor­ing oth­er areas of the state, but his impli­ca­tion is offered with­out any sup­port­ing evidence.

Since April, I’ve looked at roads, over­pass­es, bridges and blue­prints. I’ve com­piled a com­pre­hen­sive trans­porta­tion project list with sub­stan­tial­ly more mon­ey for high­way projects than Inslee’s pro­pos­al. Nine­ty-six per­cent of those projects get fin­ished and are locat­ed through­out our state.

What projects is King talk­ing about? He does­n’t say, nor in the online ver­sion of the op-ed does he link to a page where his research can be accessed by the public.

The governor’s plan to pun­ish big pol­luters was no sur­prise either. How­ev­er, it won’t be the gas and diesel indus­try that would pay. It would be the f [sic] peo­ple in our state who own a gas- or diesel-pow­ered vehi­cle who would foot the bill. Every per­son who needs to dri­ve a car or truck to get to work would be pun­ished because they are the “big, bad polluters.”

The first thing that stood out to me when I read the above para­graph at the break­fast table was the beau­ti­ful­ly placed typo that appears in the mid­dle sen­tence: It would be the f peo­ple in our state who own a gas or diesel pow­ered vehi­cle who would foot the bill.

Yes… the f peo­ple, ladies and gen­tle­men! It’s always nice when Repub­li­cans inad­ver­tent­ly let slip in print what they real­ly think of reg­u­lar folks, isn’t it?

In fair­ness to King, we don’t know if the typo orig­i­nat­ed from the copy he sent The Times or whether some­one at The Times acci­den­tal­ly made him look bad. If this typo appeared in the online ver­sion of King’s op-ed, it has since been removed. But it’s still there in the print edition.

King goes on to thought­less­ly attack Inslee’s sen­si­ble approach to penal­iz­ing pol­luters. We’ll have more to say on that tomor­row. What I real­ly want to get to in this post is the appar­ent zenith of King’s op-ed… the part where he attempts to lay out alter­na­tive ideas with­out actu­al­ly lay­ing out any alter­na­tive ideas:

The gov­er­nor has chal­lenged leg­isla­tive trans­porta­tion lead­ers to bring real solu­tions for­ward that would help meet our emis­sions limit.

So, gov­er­nor, here are real solu­tions. Each approach would pro­duce a direct and mea­sur­able reduc­tion in car­bon emis­sions with­out endan­ger­ing our economy:

• Pur­sue com­mon-sense reforms in con­junc­tion with a bal­anced trans­porta­tion rev­enue package.
• Cre­ate a tax incen­tive for employ­ers to con­vert com­mer­cial truck and car fleets to alter­na­tive fuels.
• Cre­ate tar­gets for con­vert­ing the state fer­ry fleet to liq­uid nat­ur­al gas.
• Find ways to pro­mote and diver­si­fy low-car­bon ener­gy sources such as nuclear and hydropower.

None of these bul­let points pack any punch. “Pur­sue com­mon-sense reforms in con­junc­tion with a bal­anced trans­porta­tion pack­age” … that’s a noth­ing­burg­er. There’s no such thing as com­mon sense (if there were, elect­ed offi­cials like King would­n’t talk inces­sant­ly about need­ing it). What reforms does he favor? What does he mean by bal­anced trans­porta­tion pack­age? He does­n’t say.

Num­ber two is “Cre­ate a tax incen­tive for employ­ers to con­vert com­mer­cial truck and car fleets to alter­na­tive fuels”. Tax cred­its, or incen­tives, have a mixed record. Some­times they work, but often­times they don’t end up chang­ing peo­ple’s behav­ior. In any case, the addi­tion of yet anoth­er tax cred­it would mean for­go­ing rev­enue for the state trea­sury, and we have bil­lions of dol­lars in oblig­a­tions to our­selves and our chil­dren that we’re not cur­rent­ly meeting.

Num­ber three is “Cre­ate tar­gets for con­vert­ing the state fer­ry fleet to liq­uid nat­ur­al gas.” What should those tar­gets be? Details, please!

Num­ber four is “Find ways to pro­mote and diver­si­fy low-car­bon ener­gy sources such as nuclear and hydropow­er.” Again, we ask: Where are the specifics? A sen­tence that begins with the words Find ways to is not a solu­tion to anything.

We’ve already got plen­ty of dams on our rivers, and we’ve already got one very expen­sive nuclear pow­er plant run­ning at the heav­i­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed Han­ford Nuclear Reser­va­tion. King must know that nuclear pow­er plants pro­duce tox­ic waste and dams block migrat­ing fish. Does he real­ly think we should build more of either?

King con­cludes with this:

Regard­less of where you reside or your polit­i­cal lean­ings, it isn’t dif­fi­cult to see the need for new invest­ments in our state’s trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture. We need a trans­porta­tion rev­enue pack­age and plan that incen­tivizes not penal­izes. We need more than con­ver­sa­tion starters. We need solu­tions that are fair and equi­table for the entire state.

King’s call to action is disin­gen­u­ous and hol­low. Any­one who has been involved in advo­cat­ing for a trans­porta­tion pack­age for our state over the past two years knows that King and his cau­cus were all talk and no action in 2013 and 2014.

The House at least pro­duced a plan and vot­ed on it; the Repub­li­can-con­trolled Sen­ate did noth­ing. Sen­ate Repub­li­cans could­n’t even agree among them­selves on what to put for­ward for dis­cus­sion, let alone a vote.

Thanks in large part to their intran­si­gence, the effort to replace the I‑5 Colum­bia Riv­er Cross­ing col­lapsed, and Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon for­feit­ed hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment offered to put up to replace the aging bridge.

This op-ed is more of the same. In a way, it’s like a fil­i­buster. King and his cau­cus are stalling because they’ve got noth­ing. Notice that King uses the word solu­tions (or real solu­tions) in is col­umn four times, but the only idea he ever flesh­es out is the sug­gest­ed tax cred­it for employ­ers to con­vert their vehi­cles to alter­na­tive fuels. And it’s not much of an idea. The rest is either crit­i­cism of Inslee or mumbo-jumbo.

It looks like Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have every inten­tion of let­ting us down again in 2015. The most we’re like­ly to get out of them is more boil­er­plate like this.

They don’t seem to be inter­est­ed in work­ing con­struc­tive­ly to pro­duce a trans­porta­tion bud­get, so it’d be nice if they stopped wast­ing every­one’s time.