Taxes, tabs, and tolls: Are you ready for a tsunami of taxes coming down on us?
Mar 20, 2014, 1:36 PM | Updated: Mar 21, 2014, 9:42 am
(AP Photo/file)
Taken from Thursday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show.
Are you ready for a tsunami of taxes to come raining down on you?
Let’s start with the bill that Governor Inslee is signing to raise car tab fees for ferries. The ferry riders pay just a fraction of the cost of taking them across the water. So now we’re going to have a $5 service fee for every vehicle and a $12 fee for title transactions so that we can all subsidize the ferry riders even more.
That’s just one of the taxes that’s coming down on us, because they are also planning to send to King County voters a massive car tab increase. It would increase the price of a car tab by $60 and add one-tenth of a cent to the sales tax in King County. Why? So that we can subsidize all the Metro bus riders.
There’s a real problem with all of that, that is that Metro is one of the most inefficient agencies imaginable. Metro’s costs have skyrocketed so much faster than inflation. Over the past 12 years, Metro bus operating costs have gone up 83 percent. Inflation in that period has gone up 33 percent. This is an out of control agency and they’re going to take more money from us.
I’m still not done. The tsunami continues because on the roads, the 520 bridge tolls are going up. The Transportation Commission has announced that they’re going to jack the tolls two and half percent starting July 1. Why? Because they can, and they are still talking about adding tolls to I-90.
So we’ve got tabs, taxes and tolls. The tsunami of fees is coming down on all of us. Again, why? Because the people of this region would rather give the most inefficient government bureaucrats imaginable more of their money instead of keeping it for themselves. That is a mentality I cannot understand, especially when we are giving them record tax revenues already.
Taken from Thursday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show.
Related:
Bill heading to Inslee raises car tab fees
SR 520 tolls going up again; I-90 tolls on hold
King County voters to decide future of Metro Transit
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