The Washington state legislature unanimously approved a $10.4 billion transportation budget for fiscal year 2021, avoiding at least for now the effects of last November’s successful referendum that cut a major source of funding for highway and transit projects.
Called Initiative 976 (I-976), the referendum calls for significant reductions in the state’s car-tab registration fee and curtails use of local excise taxes, including those applied in metropolitan Seattle for the Sound Transit regional transportation system. Lawsuits by the state of Washington, King County, which includes the city of Seattle, and others have so far blocked implementation of the initiative, claiming its language violates the state constitution. Though it passed statewide, Seattle-area voters rejected the initiative by a wide margin, and have in recent years supported local-only taxes for transit programs, which would take a harder hit than road and bridge projects.