Live from Whatcom: Senate Republican Transportation Listening Tour

It’s been a fog­gy day here in Belling­ham, but the low vis­i­bil­i­ty has not kept peo­ple from com­ing to the Belling­ham leg of the Sen­ate Repub­li­can’s lis­ten­ing tour, because this place is packed. As we cov­ered ear­li­er this month, Belling­ham was not orig­i­nal­ly a place sched­uled to be part of the tour, but the size of the audi­ence shows no indi­ca­tion of that. 

It’s not all Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors who are here, but in atten­dance are Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Rod­ney Tom (who prob­a­bly still thinks he’s a Demo­c­rat), Sen­a­tor Cur­tis King (co-chair of the Sen­ate Trans­porta­tion Com­mit­tee), the insuf­fer­able Sen­a­tor Doug Erick­sen (42 LD) , the “road­kill” Demo­c­rat Sen­a­tor Steve Hobbs, and Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Jeff Mor­ris (D‑40) and Vin­cent Buys (R‑42).

Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Lynn Peter­son spoke first after intro­duc­tions to give con­text about trans­porta­tion issues, and then they went straight into pub­lic comment. 

[6:28] It seems like a lot of union mem­bers are here in atten­dance, I spot about 6 or 7 peo­ple in the orange shirts they nor­mal­ly wear.

[6:30] It looks like one of the was just called up for com­ment. A mem­ber of the labor­er’s local, he advo­cat­ed for a gas tax increase as crit­i­cal to the state. 

[6:34] A con­trac­tor from Sno­homish coun­ty advo­cat­ed before the leg­is­la­tors a 10 cent gas tax increase and the crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture projects it would fund. When Repub­li­cans would­n’t pass a trans­porta­tion bud­get last ses­sion, they were hurt­ing the busi­ness­es they claim it’s their mis­sion to help. 

[6:36] Two mem­bers of the audi­ence in a row just advo­cat­ed for sep­a­rat­ed bike lanes and bet­ter pub­lic tran­sit. As a bike-heavy town, this is not a sur­pris­ing sen­ti­ment at all. One of the com­menter also plugged Seat­tle Metro being able to raise their own levies. Tru­ly a state whose res­i­dents cares about each other.

[6:43] A few peo­ple it very pol­i­cy-spe­cif­ic con­cerns just spoke, advo­cat­ing minor changes in spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy areas which did­n’t have much impact into oth­er parts of the trans­porta­tion sys­tem. More peo­ple spoke in favor of increas­ing the gas tax.

[6:46] Chris John­son, the busi­ness agent for the labor­ers union in the area, asked leg­is­la­tors not to save mon­ey on the backs of work­ers, that tak­ing mon­ey out of work­ers’ pock­ets is not real­ly sav­ing mon­ey at all. He’s afri­ad the Sen­ate Repub­li­can’s will try to take away the pre­vail­ing wage, which would be a major blow to work­ers across the state.

[6:53] Local fund­ing options for tran­sit dis­trict has returned as a point by the com­menters. In Belling­ham, just as in Seat­tle, cit­i­zens want to make deci­sions in their com­mu­ni­ties about impor­tant issues like mass tran­sit, instead of being held back by the state.

[6:56] Com­mu­ni­ty activist Stoney Bird came up to speak, speak­ing about chang­ing trans­porta­tion trends and “cli­mate dis­rup­tion” and “cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe” being large pres­sures which required the leg­is­la­ture to act on a trans­porta­tion package. 

[7:00] The chair of the Ana­cortes Fer­ry Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee first thanked Rep. Jeff Mor­ris for his sup­port of the fer­ry, and then launched into the need for a ded­i­cat­ed source of rev­enue. Prac­ti­cal­ly no one has spo­ken against rais­ing the gas tax, it seems most peo­ple rec­og­nize there’s a prob­lem, the leg­is­la­ture just actu­al­ly needs to do some­thing about it. 

[7:03] Anoth­er mem­ber of the car­pen­ters union spoke against get­ting rid of the pre­vail­ing wage. Labor seems to be very afraid of pre­vail­ing wage pro­vi­sions going away, and expect a lot of mobi­liza­tion if the Repub­li­cans pro­pose it this session.

[7:12] Some­one just spoke against the gas tax but sup­ports liv­ing wages. And get­ting bicy­clists to pay some sort of gas tax them­selves. Inter­est­ing, but her com­ments are unique in that she’s the only one so far to have said any­thing like it.

[7:22] More and more union mem­bers have shown up, show­ing that this is an issue that’s impor­tant to them and their livelihoods.

[7:28] In an inter­est­ing turn of events, the chair of the state Lib­er­tar­i­an Par­ty showed up to speak, advo­cat­ing for…what lib­er­tar­i­ans nor­mal­ly advo­cate for. How stark­ly dif­fer­ent he was than the rest of the speak­ers was appar­ent as he called for pri­va­tiz­ing the fer­ry sys­tem, cre­at­ing trans­porta­tion vouch­ers, and gut­ting mass transit. 

As the meet­ing end­ed, it was appar­ent that most peo­ple want­ed more invest­ment in our infra­struc­ture while pro­tect­ing decent jobs and alter­na­tive trans­porta­tion. While there were a few naysay­ers, and no Tim Eyman to boo, it showed that at least in this part of Wash­ing­ton, peo­ple want the leg­is­la­ture to invest more in trans­porta­tion and in actu­al solu­tions, instead of push­ing half-mea­sure that decrease our qual­i­ty of life and hurt our shared society.