VICTORY! Bill to grant new revenue authority to Sound Transit gets out of state House

A North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute pri­or­i­ty bill that would give Sound Tran­sit the abil­i­ty to flex­i­bly raise addi­tion­al fund­ing to accel­er­ate tran­sit expan­sion projects in cen­tral Puget Sound was vot­ed out of the Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives very ear­ly this morn­ing by the nar­row­est of mar­gins, 50–48.

Sen­ate Bill 5528, which now returns to the Sen­ate for con­cur­rence, is prime spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Jamie Ped­er­sen (D‑43rd Dis­trict: Seat­tle), and cham­pi­oned by Seat­tle Sub­way, The Urban­ist, the Sier­ra Club’s Cas­cade Chap­ter, Trans­porta­tion Choic­es Coali­tion, NPI, and many oth­er organizations.

The bill, which is also sup­port­ed by the City of Seat­tle and Sound Tran­sit, would allow ST to cre­ate what the bill dubs “enhanced ser­vice zones” con­sist­ing of a city or a city and adja­cent areas with­in its juris­dic­tion. The Sound Tran­sit Board, upon rec­om­men­da­tion of an advi­so­ry com­mit­tee, could form an enhanced ser­vice zone and ask vot­ers in that zone if they would like to autho­rize addi­tion­al rev­enue streams to fund tran­sit expan­sion projects such as Link light rail or Stride BRT.

Last sum­mer, an NPI sur­vey of Emer­ald City Vot­ers found that a huge major­i­ty of Seat­tle vot­ers are sup­port­ive of a tran­sit fund­ing mea­sure to accel­er­ate Sound Tran­sit 3 projects, with over half strong­ly sup­port­ive. Seat­tle would be the most like­ly can­di­date for an enhanced ser­vice zone, but oth­er cities in ST’s juris­dic­tion (like Everett) could also lob­by Sound Tran­sit to form an ESZ if they wished.

I pre­sent­ed this research find­ing to leg­is­la­tors dur­ing both of the pub­lic hear­ings on Sen­ate Bill 5528. No one spoke against the bill in either hearing.

How­ev­er, Repub­li­cans don’t like the bill — they have long been on an anti-tran­sit tear — and chose to almost uni­form­ly oppose it, first in the Sen­ate and then again ear­ly this morn­ing in the House. Only Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Brad Hawkins had the good sense to vote yea. Sev­en front­line Demo­c­ra­t­ic House mem­bers also vot­ed against the bill, leav­ing just a bare major­i­ty of the House in favor.

The roll call was as follows:

Roll Call
SB 5528
RTA addi­tive revenue
Final Pas­sage as Amend­ed by the House
3/3/2022

Yeas: 50; Nays: 48

Vot­ing Yea: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Bate­man, Bergquist, Berry, Callan, Chap­man, Chopp, Cody, Davis, Dolan, Duerr, Enten­man, Fey, Fitzgib­bon, Frame, Good­man, Gregerson, Hack­ney, Hansen, Har­ris-Tal­ley, John­son, J., Kir­by, Klo­ba, Lekanoff, Macri, Mor­gan, Orms­by, Ortiz-Self, Orwall, Peter­son, Pol­let, Ramel, Ramos, Ric­cel­li, Ryu, San­tos, Sells, Senn, Sim­mons, Slat­ter, Springer, Stonier, Sul­li­van, Tay­lor, Thai, Tharinger, Valdez, Walen, Wicks, Wylie, Jinkins

Vot­ing Nay: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Abbarno, Barkis, Berg, Boehnke, Bronoske, Caldier, Cham­bers, Chan­dler, Chase, Cor­ry, Dent, Don­aghy, Dufault, Dye, Eslick, Gil­day, Goehn­er, Gra­ham, Grif­fey, Har­ris, Hoff, Jacob­sen, Klick­er, Klip­pert, Kraft, Kretz, Leav­itt, MacEwen, May­cum­ber, McCaslin, McEn­tire, Mos­bruck­er, Orcutt, Paul, Robert­son, Rude, Rule, Schmick, Shew­make, Steele, Stokes­bary, Suther­land, Vick, Volz, Walsh, Wilcox, Ybar­ra, Young

Demo­c­ra­t­ic mem­bers vot­ing nay on SB 5528 were April Berg and Bran­di Don­aghy of the 44th Dis­trict (Sno­homish Coun­ty), Dave Paul of the 10th Dis­trict (part of which is in Sno­homish Coun­ty), Mari Leav­itt and Dan Bronoske of the 28th Dis­trict (Pierce Coun­ty), and Ali­cia Rule and Sharon Shew­make of the 42nd Dis­trict (which is locat­ed in What­com Coun­ty, a coun­ty out­side of ST’s jurisdiction).

The rest of the cau­cus vot­ed yea, includ­ing the entire Seat­tle del­e­ga­tion, the entire South King Coun­ty del­e­ga­tion, and the entire East­side of King Coun­ty del­e­ga­tion. Pri­or to the final vote, the House approved one amend­ment, offered by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Debra Enten­man (D‑47th Dis­trict: South King Coun­ty), which explic­it­ly “pro­hibits sys­tem improve­ments financed by enhanced ser­vice zones from delay­ing the esti­mat­ed com­ple­tion date of high-capac­i­ty trans­porta­tion sys­tem improve­ments con­tained in an exist­ing vot­er-approved region­al tran­sit plan by more than six months,” as sum­ma­rized by non­par­ti­san staff.

In oth­er words, Sound Tran­sit may not pri­or­i­tize projects with enhanced ser­vice zone rev­enue at the expense of oth­er projects. Tran­sit advo­cates have infor­mal­ly dubbed this the “fin­ish the spine” amend­ment. It was­n’t in the ver­sion that passed the Sen­ate, so the Sen­ate will need to sign off on the bill. Assum­ing that hap­pens before March 10th, the bill will go to Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee to be signed into law, and Sound Tran­sit can start con­tem­plat­ing next steps.

Here is how the process will work, as detailed by the non­par­ti­san staff report:

Before an ESZ may be estab­lished, it must first be rec­om­mend­ed to the RTA board by an advi­so­ry com­mit­tee com­posed of board mem­bers rep­re­sent­ing the sub­area in which the pro­posed ESZ is locat­ed. The advi­so­ry com­mit­tee’s rec­om­men­da­tions must include pro­posed sys­tem improve­ments ben­e­fit­ing the ESZ, to be financed by res­i­dents of the ESZ but con­struct­ed and oper­at­ed by the RTA.

If the board estab­lish­es the rec­om­mend­ed ESZ, then the board must sub­mit a bal­lot propo­si­tion to vot­ers with­in the ESZ at a gen­er­al or spe­cial elec­tion for approval of the pro­posed sys­tem improve­ments and fund­ing sources. The fund­ing sources may not be imposed with­out approval of a sim­ple major­i­ty of the vot­ers in the ESZ vot­ing on the propo­si­tion. The propo­si­tion must include a spe­cif­ic descrip­tion of the pro­posed sys­tem improve­ment or improve­ments, includ­ing speed, reli­a­bil­i­ty, and safe­ty enhance­ments to the improve­ments, and the fund­ing sources to be imposed with­in the ESZ to raise rev­enue to fund the improve­ment or improvements.

Design and con­struc­tion of the sys­tem improve­ments approved by the vot­ers of an enhanced ser­vice zone shall not mate­ri­al­ly and unrea­son­ably delay the esti­mat­ed com­ple­tion date of high capac­i­ty trans­porta­tion sys­tem improve­ments con­tained in an exist­ing vot­er-approved region­al tran­sit plan.

So, using Seat­tle as an exam­ple, the Sound Tran­sit Board would form an Emer­ald City advi­so­ry com­mit­tee con­sist­ing of board­mem­bers from the North King sub­area, which is one of Sound Tran­sit’s five sub­ar­eas. (The oth­ers are East King, South King, Sno­homish, and Pierce.) If that advi­so­ry com­mit­tee rec­om­mend­ed for­ma­tion of an enhanced ser­vice zone, then Sound Tran­sit would have to present a pro­pos­al to the vot­ers in that zone via bal­lot propo­si­tion of projects to be fund­ed by either a motor vehi­cle excise tax (MVET) or com­mer­cial park­ing tax.

SB 5228 allows ESZ pro­pos­als to autho­rize the fol­low­ing types of improve­ments:

• enhance­ments to one or more high capac­i­ty trans­porta­tion sys­tems [i.e. Link light rail] con­tained in an exist­ing vot­er-approved region­al tran­sit plan, includ­ing mod­i­fi­ca­tions to an exist­ing sys­tem’s facil­i­ties that improve per­for­mance char­ac­ter­is­tics such as speed, reli­a­bil­i­ty, poten­tial for future expan­sion, and safe­ty or the com­ple­tion date of the sys­tem but do not change the mode or route align­ment of the sys­tem pre­vi­ous­ly approved by vot­ers, and improve­ments to ser­vice, such as reduc­ing head­way times or adding inter­im bus service;
• new rail improve­ments on align­ments that are not con­tained in an exist­ing vot­er-approved region­al tran­sit plan and con­nect to the high capac­i­ty trans­porta­tion system;
• high capac­i­ty trans­porta­tion sys­tem plan­ning for future sys­tem expan­sion with­in the enhanced ser­vice zone; or
• a com­bi­na­tion of these improvements.

Our team at NPI con­sid­ers this a thought­ful, ele­gant, and flex­i­ble solu­tion for rais­ing addi­tion­al rev­enue for tran­sit expan­sion, and we’re excit­ed to see it close to the fin­ish line in the leg­isla­tive process. We thank law­mak­ers for pri­or­i­tiz­ing this bill in the hours lead­ing up today’s final leg­isla­tive cut­off. This bill will help address a big need and respond to vot­er hunger for faster tran­sit expansion.