The impact of the Boeing Company on Washington State, even after the Chicago headquartering, even after South Carolina, remains hard to overstate. The total state budget, at $33.6 billion, is dwarfed by Boeing’s forecast of revenues of $82-to-$85 billion in 2013. The company employs almost 86,000, to the state’s 60,000-plus workforce. Throw in related businesses and suppliers, and the “aerospace cluster” grows to 131,000 jobs.
But Boeing’s support — and that of heavyweights the Association of Washington Business and Washington Roundtable — for a $9.5-billion transportation package was not enough for Washington’s Senate Republicans, who were variously against a 10-cent gas tax increase (phased in over five years, upped two cents annually), the Columbia River Crossing project as a whole, the light rail component of the Columbia River Crossing project, and letting WSDOT spend money on new roads before fixing the old ones.
It’s true that criticism of the Columbia River project has been bipartisan, but historically state Republicans haven’t gripped the public purse so tightly when it comes to roads, job creation, and competitiveness. Ten years ago, when Washington State threw $3 billion in tax incentives at Boeing, then-governor Gary Locke was “flanked by Democratic and Republican legislators” who hoped to win Dreamliner business. What was top priority? “First, we are closing on a transportation package,” said Governor Locke in 2003.
This year, with the 777X on the line? “Legislature leaves Boeing up in air,” said the Bellevue Reporter. “Aerospace industry wins and loses in Olympia,” was how the Everett Herald put it — but the wins were all in the million-dollar column (education funding, tax exemptions), while the losses had to do with billions (transportation, clean water).
This led KPLU News to ask, “Did Washington lawmakers hurt efforts to win the Boeing 777x?”
Transportation supporters say it certainly didn’t help that Senate Republicans, bolstered by “turncoat” Democrats Rodney Tom and Tim Sheldon, said no while offering no proposal of their own. That monkey wrench tossed into the Columbia River project also killed off a number of straightforward road expansions and improvements, and funding for road maintenance, ferries, the State Patrol, and freight and passenger rail — at least, until the debate can start up again next legislative session.
“Go talk to the people who’ll pay the 10 cents gas tax increase,” Sen. Curtis King (R-Yakima), co-chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, told Crosscut. Presumably, he meant his eastern Washington constituents rather than, say, the 131,000 employed by the aerospace cluster.
While the price of gas is infamously volatile, if you adjust for inflation, the gas tax itself hasn’t really increased since 1977 — before then it was higher. Trying to keep the price of gas down by freezing the gas tax (now less than one-tenth of the price per gallon) has been a doomed rearguard action. You can save far more money by buying a car with better gas mileage (which, by the way, is one reason the gas tax brings in less revenue these days). Boeing, maker of the fuel-sipping 787, understands that dynamic. But Washington’s Republicans seem happy to let drivers spend a dollar to save a gas-tax dime.
