Gas Tax: Repeal exposes fault lines

Thursday, July 7, 2005

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

Proponents of repealing the gas tax increase presented nearly 233,000 signatures in Olympia yesterday for Initiative 912, likely enough to ensure its place on the November ballot.

What will play out over the course of what promises to be an intense election campaign in the next five months is whether votes will come as easily as signatures. By November, voters will have had months to get used to paying the first 3-cent step in the gas tax increase. Projects will be in the pipeline, and by Election Day it should be clear to voters just how much getting those three pennies back would cost them.

November will also show just how and where the yes and no votes will break, and along what geographic, ideological and political fault lines.

There is an obvious split among Republicans. The state Republican Party has taken no position on the initiative, but Mason and Kitsap County Republican Parties support I-912, as does the Washington Farm Bureau.

Party Chairman Chris Vance told The Associated Press of the gas tax, "I can't think of another issue about which Republicans disagree more. It splits our coalition. You have the business community passionately in favor of raising the tax to fix our infrastructure and our conservative base is against taxes at anytime for any reason. This issue personally gives me more heartburn than anything else. Forget abortion or (gay) marriage."

Traditional Democrats have their own heartburn over the gas tax. It's regressive, and increasing it makes it more difficult for the working poor to get to the job and to the store. And the gas tax is constitutionally limited to funding roads, not the mass transit projects many urban and suburban Democrats support.

By November, however, a clear plurality of voters, led by those in the most populous counties of Western Washington, should have developed to reject the gas tax repeal and the damaging backward step it represents.


Does support or opposition to repealing the gas tax depend on political party affiliation?
8.5% Yes.	76.9% No.
7.6% Only for Republicans.	7.0% Only for Democrats.
Total Votes: 645