Keep Washington Rolling launches final NO on I‑1125 television ad, starring State Treasurer

Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling, the broad coali­tion fight­ing to defeat Tim Eyman’s Ini­tia­tive 1125, has launched its final tele­vi­sion ad of the cam­paign, with Elec­tion Day only a few hun­dred hours away.

The spot, titled “Too Cost­ly”, stars State Trea­sur­er Jim McIn­tire, who ably sum­ma­rizes the con­se­quences of Tim Eyman’s lat­est scheme.

“As State Trea­sur­er, I rarely take posi­tions on ini­tia­tives,” McIn­tire says as the ad opens. “But Tim Eyman’s Ini­tia­tive 1125 is just too cost­ly to ignore.”

He goes on to explain: “1125 would wipe out more than half a bil­lion dol­lars from cur­rent trans­porta­tion projects. Or, 1125 would lead to mil­lions more in high­er costs on future safe­ty and con­ges­tion projects — forc­ing us to choose either can­cel­ing crit­i­cal projects or high­er tax­es to make up the gap.”

He con­cludes: “That’s a bad deal for Wash­ing­ton. NO on 1125.”

We whole­heart­ed­ly agree. Wash­ing­ton just can’t afford any more of Tim Eyman’s destruc­tive, cyn­i­cal, ill-con­ceived ini­tia­tives. 1125 is so harm­ful and so poor­ly writ­ten that even many of the cor­po­ra­tions that self­ish­ly backed Eyman’s 1053 last year have donat­ed mon­ey to help run ads against 1125 this year. (Those cor­po­ra­tions include Bank of Amer­i­ca, Wey­er­haeuser, Alas­ka Air­lines, and many others).

We already know that the gas tax isn’t going to bring in the mon­ey we need  in the future to take care of our roads and bridges. That’s why we need tolls.

Gas tax rev­enues are already falling and will con­tin­ue to fall as elec­tric cars become more com­mon and inter­nal com­bus­tion engines become more effi­cient. Peo­ple are also final­ly get­ting smarter about com­bin­ing trips, in part because they want to avoid traf­fic, which can be espe­cial­ly awful dur­ing rush hour.

Ford just announced that it will begin sell­ing the new all-elec­tric ver­sion of its Focus hatch­back in the Seat­tle area, fol­low­ing in the tire tracks of Nis­san, which  began sell­ing the all-elec­tric Leaf last year. Vehi­cles like the Focus and the Leaf don’t run on gas, so their own­ers are nev­er going to fill them up at a gas sta­tion, which means they won’t be pay­ing gas tax­es on the trips they take in those vehicles.

While tolls will grad­u­al­ly begin to replace the gas tax in the years ahead, there isn’t going to be any kind of sweep­ing, overnight change. Tim Eyman makes it sound like the Leg­is­la­ture is going to turn every high­way into a turn­pike unless 1125 is passed. But that’s not the case. For the time being, tolls are only planned or being col­lect­ed in cor­ri­dors where gas tax rev­enue isn’t suf­fi­cient to build a major project, like the Taco­ma Nar­rows Bridge or Ever­green Point Float­ing Bridge.

Tolls are a sen­si­ble way to help fund high­way projects. Peo­ple pay for what they use. Hav­ing a toll reminds us all that infra­struc­ture costs mon­ey. It isn’t free. We at NPI have always dis­liked the term free­way, because it sub­con­scious­ly sug­gests that dri­ving and auto­mo­bile use are free. In real­i­ty, roads cost mon­ey. If we want safe, well-main­tained roads and bridges, we have to pay some­how. Tolls don’t have to pro­vide one hun­dred per­cent of the rev­enue, but they have to be in the mix.

Inci­den­tal­ly, this is the way it works with tran­sit and fer­ries now. Tran­sit rid­ers pay a fare when­ev­er they step aboard a bus or a train (with the cur­rent excep­tion of Seat­tle’s free ride area, which is going away). And of course any­one who dri­ves, walks, or bikes onto a fer­ry has to pay the fare for the crossing.

Roads should­n’t be any different.

It’s evi­dent that Tim Eyman real­ly dis­likes the idea of hav­ing to pay a toll to use a high­way. Per­haps he also dis­likes tolls because tolling has the poten­tial to under­mine his basic mes­sage about government.

Eyman does not talk about pub­lic pol­i­cy in terms of the trade­offs. He prefers to talk about only the rev­enue side of the equa­tion, which is decep­tive, because such a one-sided dis­cus­sion masks the con­se­quences of adopt­ing his ini­tia­tives. Eyman’s ini­tia­tives are all built on the false premise that we can have some­thing for nothing.

Eyman is fond of claim­ing that the sky did­n’t fall after two of his ear­ly tax-cut­ting ini­tia­tives (I‑695 and I‑747) were adopt­ed. But actu­al­ly, those ini­tia­tives have been just as harm­ful to our well-being as Eyman’s oppo­si­tion pre­dict­ed they would be. We sim­ply did­n’t feel the effects all at once due to backfilling.

But the days of back­fill­ing are over.

WSDOT recent­ly announced that con­struc­tion was begin­ning on a new one hun­dred and forty-four car fer­ry, which will replace the fifty-five year old boat M.V. Ever­green State. The new fer­ry will be built by Vig­or Ship­yards in Seat­tle (for­mer­ly Todd Pacif­ic). The news release point­ed out that the state actu­al­ly has a con­tract with Vig­or for three boats, but it only has the mon­ey to build one.

This is a con­se­quence of I‑695. If we still had the statewide motor vehi­cle excise tax, we’d be able to afford those oth­er boats. We’d also prob­a­bly have the mon­ey to fix some of our aging ter­mi­nals, which are falling apart. But we don’t.

Wash­ing­ton is suf­fer­ing now because of Tim Eyman ini­tia­tives that are more than a decade old. At this moment, we have the pow­er to say NO to anoth­er extreme­ly dan­ger­ous Tim Eyman ini­tia­tive. Let’s put the kibosh on this scheme to stop light rail and wreck our abil­i­ty to fund bad­ly need­ed road projects.

Vote NO on I‑1125.