In Our View: A Fair Shake on Transportation

Although the state Legislature is on hiatus until — probably — 2015, political posturing and preening is never out of season. At the forefront during this offseason is discussion about transportation and whether lawmakers will come to some sort of agreement on statewide funding.

And when it comes to transportation, lobbyist Mark Brown, who represents Vancouver, Ridgefield, and Battle Ground in Olympia, just might be on the right track. “We’re either going to be a part of that parade, or we’re going to be on the curb watching it go by,” Brown said. “We all need to regroup and figure out how to protect our interests. ‘No’ votes are not the answer.”

During a special session late last year, the Legislature was unable to reach agreement on a plan to fund major transportation projects throughout the state. Lawmakers followed that by again failing to come together during the short 2014 session. As The Columbian has pointed out editorially in the past, those failures were victories as far as Clark County is concerned. One plan floated in February would have raised $12.3 billion statewide through an increase to the gas tax, but only $46 million of that would have been earmarked for Southwest Washington. The plan clearly would have short-changed this region, and its death should not be mourned by local residents. But it also raised questions about the lingering impact from the death of the Columbia River Crossing project.

In 2013, Senators Don Benton, R-Vancouver, and Ann Rivers, R-La Center, played key roles in scuttling the CRC in the Legislature. And that brings us back to Brown’s notion of needing to regroup and figuring out how to protect local interests. “It’s a vacuum,” Rivers told Columbian reporter Eric Florip. “For so long, all the people up there heard was CRC, CRC, CRC.”

Now that the CRC project is dead, the onus is on local lawmakers. When it comes to Olympia, representatives must change the discussion and make the rest of the state understand that our transportation needs go well beyond a new Interstate 5 Bridge.

In December, a group of Southwest Washington lawmakers sent a letter to Gov. Jay Inslee, informing him of other needs in this part of the state. Among them: A proposed widening of state Highway 14 from I-205 to 164th Avenue, and new interchanges connecting I-5 to Mill Plain and to Fourth Plain. But the proposal that came forth treated Clark County as nothing more than an ATM — hand out money and get nothing in return.

“To a person, almost everyone was disappointed with the package that was (announced) by the Senate,” Rep. Jim Moeller, D-Vancouver, said. “They were shocked that there was so little for Southwest Washington.”

Not that any transportation plan is going to come easily. Following the close of this year’s legislative session, Inslee blamed Senate Republicans for the proposal’s failure, and Sen. Curtis King, R-Yakima, responded with the unusual step of releasing notes detailing the negotiations that took place. Hence the posturing and preening. The lesson, as always, was that compromise is difficult. Any government plan to raise about $12 billion is bound to be rife with give-and-take, triumph and disappointment.

But lawmakers will revisit the idea of a transportation package, perhaps even in a special session later this year, and they will need to be apprised of the needs in this part of the state. For that to happen in an effective fashion, local representatives must present a united front to the rest of the Legislature.