Harger: King County raised your sales tax without a vote. The one time voters got a say on this issue, they said no
Jun 15, 2026, 7:26 AM | Updated: 4:21 pm
On Friday, the King County Transportation District voted 5-4 to raise your sales tax by a tenth of a percent. You didn’t get a say. You won’t get one.
I want functioning roads. My kids need to get to school. I’d prefer the bridges stay up. Roads aren’t free. We’ve got to pay for them. None of that’s in dispute today.
The dispute is how five elected people just decided, on their own, that they’d pay for those roads with your money, on a Friday, in a meeting most of you didn’t know was happening, with an authority the voters of King County declined to give them 12 years ago.
The Transportation District is the King County Council wearing a different hat. Same nine people, different name on the agenda, different powers. Sitting on that board, they can impose this tax on their own. No ballot. No campaign. Not even a signature in or out from County Executive Girmay Zahilay, who has no role in this one. About $100 million a year. Roughly $40 out of a median household. The vote was close: 5-4. It becomes law on January 1, 2027.
That alone is a story. The detail underneath it is the story.
King County voters rejected this exact transportation tax in 2014. The board imposed it twelve years later anyway
The King County Transportation District was created in 2014 specifically to put a transportation tax before voters. The package was a 0.1% sales tax bundled with a $60 car tab fee, the same tenth of a percent now in front of us, sold as a package deal to keep Metro buses running and county roads in repair.
Voters rejected it 55 to 45.
The district has been sitting there with its taxing authority unused ever since. Twelve years. The same board, with different people in the seats, just used it for the first time. The press release calls this prudent stewardship of the county’s road system. The 2014 voters who said no are still out there. Nobody asked them.
When the voters say no, the board says wait. When the board says yes without the voters, there’s no second vote.
King County Roads Division faces a $200 million annual shortfall. The math doesn’t fix the politics
The Roads Division is short by about $200 million a year. The capital fund is on track to be wiped out by 2028, which means no new projects, slower response, and bridge repairs that don’t happen. The county maintains roughly 1,500 miles of road and 188 bridges, much of it out in the unincorporated stretches that don’t have their own public works staff. Skyway. White Center. Vashon. Out past Enumclaw. December’s flooding alone did more than $10 million in damage, and the bills are still arriving.
The structural math’s real too. State law caps property tax growth at 1% a year, which looks principled on paper but stops making sense the second somebody prices a gallon of asphalt. Gas tax revenue’s been flat for years, because the state told everybody to buy a Tesla, and a lot of us did. The county grew from 1.8 million people in 2006 to nearly 2.4 million now. More cars. More potholes. Less revenue per pothole.
I’m not arguing the math.
I’m arguing about what happens when a board nine people deep decides the math is now their permission slip.
Eight Seattle City Council members, led by Alexis Mercedes Rinck, signed a letter against King County’s funding plan
Seattle taxpayers have a particular reason to be irritated.
Eight members of the Seattle City Council, led by Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, signed a letter last week objecting to the way the money would be allocated. The tax is collected across all of King County. Most of it funds the county Roads Division for unincorporated areas like Skyway and Vashon. A portion gets handed back to the cities to spend on their own roads. Under the cap the board approved, Seattle’s slice of that city money drops from $4.8 million a year down to $1.9 million. That’s a $30 million cut over the decade, give or take.
Seattle contributes around 40% of the sales taxes King County collects. Under this plan, Seattle ends up paying among the highest per-capita rates in the county and getting one of the lowest per-capita returns.
Where does the money flow instead? Among other places, the wealthy enclaves on the Eastside. Medina. Hunts Point. Clyde Hill. Median home values north of three million dollars in those zip codes. The kind of place where the driveway’s longer than my street. They’re now getting subsidized road money out of Seattle’s pockets, courtesy of a board that didn’t ask voters whether this was a good idea.
City Councilmember Eddie Lin called it what it is. A regressive tax in which Seattle taxpayers subsidize the road budgets of some of the richest ZIP codes in America.
RELATED STORIES
Seattle’s library levy, transit sales tax, and King County roads tax all hitting voters in 2026
This summer and fall are tax season at the ballot box in Seattle.
In August, voters get a $480 million library levy, more than double the $219 million levy it replaces. In November, Mayor Wilson wants to double Seattle’s transit sales tax from 0.15 percent to 0.30 percent, raising about $138 million a year for the next decade.
I’ll have upcoming commentaries on both. For now, the point is just to count. A library levy that doubles. A transit tax that doubles. A roads tax that the county already imposed without asking anyone.
At least Seattle voters get to weigh in on two of the three. That’s the difference worth noting.
Seattle’s combined sales tax hits 10.65% with King County’s new tenth of a percent
The tax is small. That’s the design.
A tenth here. A tenth there. A car tab fee. A levy renewal that doubles when nobody’s paying close attention. None of it feels like much on its own. It’s the same logic that ends with a family wondering why the streaming bill is now bigger than the cable bill used to be, except the streaming charges are coming from nine elected officials who never asked.
The receipt at the bottom of the bag tells the rest of the story. With the new King County tenth, Seattle’s combined sales tax would sit at 10.65%. Among the very highest in the country, for a city in a state that doesn’t have an income tax up and running yet either.
The precedent matters more than the dollar amount.
If a board can impose a tax that voters previously rejected, citing the same financial pressures voters already weighed when they said no, then the only thing between you and the next tax is whether the relevant body needs your permission. Many of them don’t.
This is how the government finds money when it can’t find votes.
The fix isn’t a fancier revenue formula. The fix is going back to the people. If county roads need $100 million a year, make the case. Take it to the ballot. Show voters the bridges. Show them the flood damage. Show them the structural deficit and the trade-offs. Maybe they say yes this time. Maybe they say no again.
Either way, they’ve spoken. They can live with the consequences of their decision.
The Transportation District chose not to ask.
Voters said no in 2014. The board said yes in 2026.
The money starts collecting in six and a half months.
Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here.
