SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Republicans dismiss invitations to discuss gas tax; it’s indefensible
Feb 23, 2015, 1:59 PM | Updated: 4:19 pm
State officials are trying to get a 12-cent gas tax approved. (AP)
(AP)
Taken from Monday’s edition of KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Show.
We’re another day closer to our state Legislature pushing through – with very little opposition – a 12-cent-a-gallon gas tax.
They took another step over the weekend towards this gas tax.
We’ve been trying now, for several days, to get a Republican lawmaker who supports this to come on the show. Republicans usually like to come on the show, but only if they agree with us.
The reason I’m so fired up about this is because Chris Sullivan found out something that was shocking to most of us.
State officials are converting the HOV lane on I-405 to a hot lane, where you can drive in it if you have three people in a car, or are willing to pay a toll. But they’re adding a lane. We figured OK, they’re adding another lane, so we’re going to have four general purpose lanes and one HOV/toll lane.
Then we found out, no we’re not. The extra lane is going to be a toll lane. They’re not expanding capacity at all.
If you get people to drive in that toll lane, you’re going to raise a lot of money with those tolls. They have a financial incentive to keep traffic as horrible as possible on I-405. If they added a general purpose, it would make easier flow, and people wouldn’t use the toll lanes. So they want to keep the traffic as horrible as possible to force people into toll lanes out of desperation.
So in other words we’re expanding capacity on the roads to force us to pay for tolls. Is that the way government should work? Is that really what we should be expecting from our leaders? To manufacture things as bad as possible to squeeze more money out of us?
I expect this from Democrats. Democrats always try to get as much money as possible. I expected more and better from Republicans. They were handed stronger majority in elections because the people in this state wanted more restraint on taxation.
They’re going to collect $3 billion more in the next budget cycle.
I think the Republicans should be voted out of there … A lot of people thought they were voting for Republicans to hold down tax increases.
I don’t blame the Republicans for not wanting to come on with me. I don’t blame them, at all. They thought they could just get away with this.
Taken from Monday’s edition of KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Show.
KR
