PDN news sources
OLYMPIA — Gov. Chris Gregoire’s proposal to create a nine-county ferry district — which would include both Clallam and Jefferson counties — has apparently fizzled.
The governor’s representatives briefed the House Transportation Committee on Thursday on a proposal to replace Washington State Ferries with a semi-independent regional authority.
Transportation Committee Chairwoman Rep. Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island, said the plan seemed to lack support among committee members.
“I don’t hear consensus to go forward with the plan as it is. I don’t feel it has the votes,” Clibborn said.
“The hard work now is to figure how to make the service run mean and lean.”
Senate Transportation Committee Chairwoman Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, has said she won’t support the plan.
“I don’t think that creating another layer of government is a good idea,” Haugen said after Gregoire proposed the ferry district earlier this month.
All three representatives of the 24th District, which covers Clallam and Jefferson counties as well as a portion of Grays Harbor County, said before the legislative session began that they were not convinced the governor’s idea was of value.
Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, said he was following Haugen’s lead, while Rep. Steve Tharinger, D-Sequim, said “the idea doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.” Rep. Kevin Van De Wege, D-Sequim, talked of the larger tax burden it would small on small counties.
The Legislature’s top Republican leadership also opposes the concept.
Gregoire presented the idea as a way to transform the state-run ferry system to one that transfers operational power — and some of the taxing burden — to the counties that use ferries.
The proposed district would have included all of Jefferson and Clallam counties, as well as all of San Juan, Island and Kitsap counties and portions of Snohomish, King, Skagit and Pierce counties.
Clallam is the only county among those proposed that lacks a state ferry terminal.
House Transportation Committee members were skeptical of the idea as a way to cope with the state ferry system’s financial woes.
“If Washington state can’t support it, how in the world can the counties support it?” asked Rep. Jan Angel, R-Port Orchard.
Said Rep. Mike Armstrong, R-Wenatchee:
“I don’t like the proposal. But at least it’s something. . . . Something to get us going.”
On Tuesday, in her State of the State speech, Gregoire said if the Legislature does not like her proposal, it has to come up with another solution to the system’s downward financial spiral.
“That’s what I heard the governor say: ‘If not this, then what?’ . . . We know what happens after 2013,” Clibborn said.
The state ferries system’s capital fund will hit red ink — $135.8 million — in the 2013-2015 biennium, said David Moseley, assistant secretary of the Washington Department of Transportation.
The operating fund will reach the red in the same biennium, with a projected deficit of $34.2 million.
In 2000, the state set a goal of the fares providing money to cover 80 percent of the operating costs. In reality, fares have provided an annual average of 68.4 percent of the operating costs since 2000.
In fiscal 2010, fares provided 70.5 percent of the operating costs. If capital costs are crunched into the equation, fares provided only 43 percent of the overall costs.
Moseley said labor and fuel make up 80 percent of the ferries’ costs — and both, plus shipbuilding costs, have been dramatically increasing.
He said the ferry unions gave up raises they were entitled to in 2009-2011. So far, the state and the ferry unions are still locked in negotiations for 2011-2013.
