Initiative 912 - Repeal the 9.5 cent Gas Tax fails

Wednesday, November 9, 2005

Initiative 912: Urban strongholds successfully keep gas tax

By CHRIS McGANN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER CAPITOL CORRESPONDENT

Big city big shots who bankrolled the $3 million campaign to defend the new gas tax celebrated Tuesday night as they defeated Initiative 912.

They were underdogs early on as voters from Anacortes to Zillah and the rural reaches in between blasted the 9.5-cent-a-gallon increase and overwhelmingly voted yes on I-912, which would have repealed the levy.

But King County voters pushed back even harder to protect the tax that state lawmakers approved earlier this year, indicating they'd rather pay more at the pump than put off a payment plan for the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the Evergreen Point Bridge.

As of Tuesday night, I-912 trailed slightly, but that was enough to send a shock wave through a star-powered party at the Westin Hotel in Seattle.

"I can't tell you how delighted I am that we have come as far as we have," Gov. Christine Gregoire told the crowd that included officials from Microsoft, Boeing, labor unions and the environmental community.

Rick Bender, president of the State Labor Council, said after voters soundly defeated a gas tax increase in 2002, the close I-912 race represented a landslide of support for transportation.

All eyes were on the state's urban strongholds, King, Pierce and Snohomish counties, which were the swing areas that many experts predicted would be decisive in determining I-912's fate.

Snohomish voters joined their neighbors to the south in strongly opposing I-912. Pierce County voters were splitting evenly.

No on 912 campaign spokesman Mark Funk appeared stunned at his apparent good fortune. He said he expected Eastern Washington to vote for the initiative.

"But we're breaking even in Clark County. We're breaking even in Walla Walla County. We have a solid lead in Snohomish County. And we have a really solid lead were it counts, King County!" Funk said.

"If we can keep our numbers high in King County, we're in good shape," Funk said.

Western Wireless Chief Executive John Stanton was one of the biggest contributors to the No on 912 campaign.

He actually thanked the folks that put the initiative on the ballot.

"This has made a huge difference, it's given us an opportunity to have this conversation," Stanton said. "This really represents an opportunity for people to weigh taxes versus transportation and it looks like people are saying transportation is important."

The initiative emerged this spring after the Legislature passed the new tax and omnibus $8.5 billion highway improvement plan it would help pay for.

Initiative 912 spokesman Brett Bader was confident the allure of cutting taxes would prevail, despite expensive TV ads paid by the other side.

But as the election drew near, support cooled as business, labor and environmental groups launched their media blitz to sell the new tax and 274 safety and congestion relief projects as imperative to a healthy future for the state. [Note: The number of projects has been corrected since this article was originally published]

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Gregoire compared Washington's highway system to the levies that failed in New Orleans. She said failure to maintain Washington's transportation infrastructure could also prove catastrophic in a strong earthquake.

King County's strong opposition to the initiative indicates that message had traction.

Gregoire and the No on 912 campaign chained up for the icy reception east of the Cascades and were counting on Puget Sound-area votes.

Within the Republican Party, I-912 was also seen as a referendum on last year's controversial governor's election, Gregoire's first months in office and what its leaders call tax-and-spend politics in Olympia.

If it had passed, I-912 would have stripped $5.5 billion from the $8.5 billion highway plan. It would have sent transportation planners, who are counting on $2 billion earmarked for repairing the earthquake-damaged Alaskan Way Viaduct, back to square one and lawmakers who supported the plan back to Olympia with a major defeat as they head into an election year.

Throughout the campaign, Bader, the Initiative 912 spokesman, railed against the state Department of Transportation as a wasteful, ineffective bureaucracy in need of reform.

He said he was disappointed in the outcome Tuesday night but did not concede. "There are still a lot of votes to count," he said.

Bader said the key weaknesses in the campaign were a worse-than-expected result in King County and the loss in Snohomish County.

"That's what kept us from surviving," he said. "We hit all our other targets."

Bader said despite the disappointing results, the campaign was worthwhile.

"We said all along that the citizens should get a vote on this -- and they got one," Bader said.

He said lawmakers also need to reform the Department of Transportation and policies that increase costs on highway projects.

"They need to consider getting rid of the sales tax on road construction," Bader said. "They need to consider changes to legislation so that it's easier to get projects built and most importantly, they need to plan for the state. Whether it's funded with new gas taxes or not, that is more in tune with what people want: traffic congestion relief in Western Washington and upgrades and safety improvements in Eastern Washington."

Bader said he didn't expect strong support in King County, where nearly half of the $8.5 billion would be spent.