A proposed spending plan for a 0.1% sales tax across King County would artificially limit the share of the funding that the City of Seattle would receive, distributing Seattle’s share to other cities including some of the wealthiest suburban cities in the nation.
Ryan Packer at the The Urbanist has reported extensively on this sales tax measure, which has yet to make it into the Seattle Times despite a County Council vote scheduled for Friday on the King County Transportation District funding resolutions. Eight members of the Seattle City Council signed onto a letter by Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck this week urging their county colleagues to remove the cap on Seattle’s share of the passthrough dollars that every city would receive. The letter calls out the inequitable distribution of dollars under the current plan, which would see small and wealthy Eastside cities get a disproportionate amount of funding. The letter states that “the proposal to cap that funding and restrict how it can be spent is not acceptable nor equitable. We ask that King County Council consider removing the binding cap that solely impacts City of Seattle.”
The majority of the funds collected from the sales tax would go to maintaining and repaving the county-maintained roads and bridges in unincorporated areas. These roads are often some of the worst roadways in our region, and they desperately need both maintenance and safety improvements. The proposal does mention using a safe systems approach and implementing a traffic safety action plan. It is not clear from my reading how binding safety is as part of the funding measure. The County Council should ensure that all significant road paving projects will be complete streets so we do not invest a bunch of money just to recreate the same safety issues that exist today.
An unacceptable guideline among people who ride bikes in King County is to try to avoid any street with two city names in it (like “Preston-Fall City Road”) because it is dangerous. Some of these are state routes while others are King County roads. Regardless of how they get around, everyone in King County deserves to be safe traveling on King County roads.
Seattle and other cities with a larger tax base should subsidize roads in more rural parts of King County. The county’s road network benefits everyone in the region. Cities are typically in control of their own road infrastructure, so a countywide tax that only funds project in unincorporated areas may not be fair to cities with a lot of roads to fund and relatively few residents to pay for it all. It may not make sense to ask the residents of, for example, Carnation to fund all the costs for the road network through Carnation (state highway excluded). The county proposal would provide “passthrough” dollars that send a portion of the new sales tax to cities to help them with their road investments.
The problem is that the current leading proposal gives a minimum amount for each city regardless of size, resulting in over-payments to smaller and often very wealthy cities. To cover these higher costs to small and medium cities, the proposal would cap Seattle’s share and redistribute the rest. The result is that Seattle would lose out on about $3 million every year, and those dollars would instead be distributed inequitably across smaller cities regardless of funding ability or need. Carnation, for example, would receive less of Seattle’s money than Clyde Hill. This makes no sense. Seattle taxpayers would be sending Clyde Hill, which has a median annual household income of more than $250,000, five extra dollars per Clyde Hill resident every year (see the spending breakdown in this PDF).
The county’s current plan is sloppy and imprecise. It is true that dense areas will always need to subsidize rural infrastructure, and that’s OK. People in dense areas have a clear interest in helping places like Carnation or Skykomish deal with their infrastructure challenges (both areas faced significant flooding this winter, for example). But why would we send more of Seattle’s money to the culs-de-sac in Clyde Hill than to riverside roads in Carnation? The county’s fund distribution plan does not properly include obvious factors like a city’s ability to tax itself for its own needs or a city’s share of the county’s roadway network challenges. Places like Clyde Hill can afford to fund their own road repairs. Carnation, on the other hand, has been battling devastating floods and other infrastructure challenges that impact far more people across our region than their 2,320 residents. Seattle should subsidize Carnation’s infrastructure, and so should places like Clyde Hill.
The idea of Seattle sending money to Clyde Hill or Hunt’s Point or any of these other wealthy enclaves is sickening. Seattle has a lot of infrastructure challenges to fund, including many roadways that the entire county relies on. It probably makes sense to redistribute some of Seattle’s share of the passthrough funds, but other wealthy cities need to contribute as well. All Seattle and King County taxpayers deserve a thoughtful distribution of funds so our investments go to the places that need them most.
From a Seattle City Council letter to the King County Council:
As King County considers new revenue options for funding roads maintenance in unincorporated King County, a focus on affordability and equity is critical. Passthrough dollars to cities is a good start, but the proposal to cap that funding and restrict how it can be spent is not acceptable nor equitable. We ask that King County Council consider removing the binding cap that solely impacts City of Seattle.
Under proposed Amendment 2A, our central staff analysis suggests that cities like Hunts Point, Yarrow Point, Beaux Arts Village, and others would receive a disproportionately high amount of passthrough funding per capita. And the redistribution of Seattle’s sales tax dollars won’t go to the small cities that need this funding most, like Skykomish and Carnation; these dollars will go to medium and large cities such as Redmond, Kirkland, and Sammamish. Meanwhile, Seattle will receive the lowest per capita amount of any city in King County. Further, under this amendment, the total amount Seattle would be eligible for would drop dramatically from approximately $4,812,197 to $1,910,625. Like many cities, the City of Seattle is grappling with a structural budget deficit and increased demand for city services. With this in mind, we have significant concerns with a proposal that will shift our residents’ tax dollars from Seattle to other cities.
Seattle voters frequently champion transportation investments at the ballot box, and we do not take that support for granted. Per the authorizing RCW 36.73.020, jurisdictions are able to establish transportation benefit districts to fund transportation improvement projects, and we encourage more jurisdictions to consider establishing their own transportation benefit districts to fund their own services.
Seattle residents already pay the highest sales taxes in the country. That is not something to be celebrated, but rather it reflects our deeply regressive tax code and the limited revenue options afforded to jurisdictions to fund our basic services. The poorest Seattleites pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than any of the residents of the county’s richest enclaves.
Seattleites have shown we are willing to shoulder our fair share of the burden, but our residents deserve a fair share of the returns. Should a King County roads measure pass, it must include passthrough funding without a cap.