Defeat Proposition 1, as happened last week, and you leave a lot of taxing authority on the table. Not surprisingly, local governments are pouncing. Their greediness perhaps got out of hand this week, with the Metropolitan King County Council launching a county ferry system, jacking up bus fares, and wading into programs to rebuild levees and help mental health. In what's called "Tax Hike Tuesday," the Port of Seattle also got into the frenzy, approving a $78 million property tax levy, in a kind of premature celebration of the likely departure of its one anti-tax commissioner, Alec Fisken, who appears to have been defeated. Grab it now, was the mantra. Pretty brazen stuff, given the anti-tax mood of the voters last week. Partly, politicians just can't restrain themselves with all that unused tax capacity staring at them. Other pols have decided that the voters last week didn't really matter, since it was an off-year, low-turnout election that overstated the anti-tax vote. Maybe some others figure that if they pander to Tim Eyman on I-747, the property-tax-lid initiative voided by the state Supreme Court, they can gobble up local taxes. The King County action was notable in another way: spending new property taxes to get the county into the ferry business (mostly rescuing the Vashon Island passenger ferry, which the state is discontinuing), thus gaining maybe a few hundred new transit commuters, while also raising Metro bus fares by 25 cents, thus costing transit thousands of customers. Such a move would scarcely withstand a carbon impact statement, despite County Executive Ron Sims' fondness for battling cars. There will be a taxpayer pushback, for sure. Just as likely will be a transportation pushback. This week's action was a perfect illustration of the way little pet projects will maneuver for money and votes, absent a serious regional planning entity that controls the system and the funding. The case for a single, powerful transportation planning entity for the region just got a lot stronger.
The unseemly scramble for freed-up taxes, post-Proposition 1
Defeat Proposition 1, as happened last week, and you leave a lot of taxing authority on the table. Not surprisingly, local governments are pouncing. Their greediness perhaps got out of hand this week, with the Metropolitan King County Council launching a county ferry system, jacking up bus fares, and wading into programs to rebuild levees and help mental health.
In what's called "Tax Hike Tuesday," the Port of Seattle also got into the frenzy, approving a $78 million property tax levy, in a kind of premature celebration of the likely departure of its one anti-tax commissioner, Alec Fisken, who appears to have been defeated. Grab it now, was the mantra.
Defeat Proposition 1, as happened last week, and you leave a lot of taxing authority on the table. Not surprisingly, local governments are pouncing. Their greediness perhaps got out of hand this week, with the Metropolitan King County Council launching a county ferry system, jacking up bus fares, and wading into programs to rebuild levees and help mental health.
In what's called "Tax Hike Tuesday," the Port of Seattle also got into the frenzy, approving a $78 million property tax levy, in a kind of premature celebration of the likely departure of its one anti-tax commissioner, Alec Fisken, who appears to have been defeated. Grab it now, was the mantra.
