Demystifying the State’s Supplemental Transportation Budget

Transportation funding is not an easy thing to track and analyze.  Transportation is funded at the federal, state, regional and local level, out of hundreds of different programs and accounts, which makes it very difficult to track where money is coming from and how it is spent.  Supporters of the status quo make claims that there are not additional resources for balanced transportation investments, and they claim that transportation choices are overfunded.  Understanding transportation funding is vital to disproving these claims, and is a first step to securing a more balanced transportation system. We’ll breakdown the state transportation budget for you here.

Review of the Basics

State funding makes up about 50% of all transportation investments in Washington, while federal funding makes up ~23%, bonds ~30%, and local funds make up  1% of the State budget

The State of Washington’s transportation budget is a two-year (biennial) budget cycle, staring on July 1st of the odd numbered years.  The legislature and Governor create and approve these budgets, and then pass supplemental budgets every other year.  The legislature just passed the supplemental budget, for the biennial budget that covers July, 2011- June 30, 2013.

There are over 60 sources of state funds to support our transportation system.  The largest is the motor vehicle fuel tax which collects up to $975 million/year. Other sources are license, permits, fees, and tolls.

 

The Details

The state’s transportation budget is broken down into operating and capital expenditures.  The current biennial budget appropriates $9.8 billion.  Of this amount $6.8 billion are funds generated by the state.  Here is how that money breaks down in expenditures:

 

Public transit, bike/pedestrian, and rail operations receive 7% of the entire state transportation budget.

State highway improvements receive over 80% of capital funding. Public transit receives no state capital investments, while bike and pedestrian get a very small amount.

These charts show how unbalanced our current transportation investments are at the state level. The state has chosen to invest only in a few components of the transportation system.  Part of the reason for this is the 18thamendment of the State’s constitution restrictions on transportation spending of the motor vehicle fuel tax.  Case law has determined that this money cannot be used for public transportation.  There are many fees that are also statutorily restricted, that can be changed without a constitutional amendment.  Yet, because of Tim Eyman’s I- 1053, fees must pass the nexus test, where fees generated must be expended on a related use.

In this supplemental budget, there is $167 million available in the multi-modal fee account, which could be used for public transit.  Twenty percent of multi-modal spending is spent on projects that are eligible for motor vehicle fuel tax funds.  This indicates that there is more flexibility for transit funds than many claim. They are using very limited multi-modal funding for projects that can be funded with non-flexible funds.

Cities, counties and transit systems are given authority for local revenue options, so they can raise money in their jurisdictions to manage transportation systems around the state.  Local governments and transit agencies are hungry for additional options.  Without direct state investment and with their limited or maxed out options, they must go to Olympia and advocate for more choices.  Transit agencies in WA only get 1% of their funding from State resources. Therefore they must rely on local taxes.

Local taxes for public transit in 2010 totaled $1.3billion, which accounts for 74.6 percent of the operating revenues for public transit systems. This figure includes: local sales tax revenues, utility tax revenues as well as MVET (Sound Transit). King County Metro represented 30.0 percent of the local taxes collected for public transit in 2010, while Sound Transit’s local taxes represent 43.4 percent of the statewide local tax.

Relying mostly on local taxes for public transit is not a sustainable solution, and more direct state investment in transit and bike and pedestrian is needed to stabilize our system and ensure that we have a system that works for mobility of goods and people throughout Washington.

 

 

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