Transportation Funding
#6103: Transportation Funding (2005)
Transportation funding.
Supported by Sierra Club (3 points).
Signed into law.
The Legislature passed a balanced transportation plan that provides essential funding for transit and focuses the highway side of the package into important safety and maintenance projects instead of new sprawl highways like we've seen Olympia propose in the past. The package also includes funding for the I-90 Snoqualmie Pass East project.
This $435 million safety project will protect people and wildlife with new bridges and tunnels allowing safe crossings over or under the freeway; it creates wildlife corridors between the North and South Cascades.
The business, labor, and environmental communities joined forces as a powerful coalition and successfully lobbied passage of the package. It failed the first House vote, though. Representative Helen Sommers used her leverage as the chief House budget-writer to successfully lobby enough colleagues to change their votes, and the bill eventually passed.
This was the first pro-tax vote in the legislative career of Senator Mulliken, who supported it because of the I-90/Snoqualmie Pass East project.
Senators Haugen, Swecker, and Mulliken. Representatives Murray, Jarrett, Hinkle, Sommers, and Woods.
