We were fucked. Totally fucked.
Throughout the shitshow that was our last legislative session, constituents here in King County had only one small request: the authority to tax ourselves to stave off a projected 17 percent cut in Metro bus service. Starved of sales tax revenue (thanks, Great Recession!), King County executive Dow Constantine and the mayors of every city in the county—Democrats and Republicans alike—joined forces to plead for a 1.5 percent motor vehicle excise tax (MVET) local option, an annual tax on the value of your car. The proceeds would be split 60/40 between Metro and local road maintenance.
The request easily passed the Democrat-controlled house. But thanks to the treachery of Republican-turned-Democrat-turned-self-serving-asshole Rodney Tom and his Republican-dominated so-called "Bipartisan Majority Coalition Caucus," our local MVET option was held hostage to a doomed highway-funding bill: "Once the transit crowd gets what they consider they want," Tom cynically told the Seattle Times back in July, "the road package gets torpedoed." Unable to secure enough Republican votes to pass a proposed 10.5-cent-per-gallon hike in the state gas tax, the transportation funding package died, and with it, so did the MVET to save bus service.
But as satisfying as it may be to blame this debacle on the dysfunction of Olympia, voter outrage would be more effectively focused closer to home. First, there is Senator Tom, who represents parts of Medina, Bellevue, and Kirkland. But the Republican majority that blocked the MVET includes three other state senators whose King County constituents would be adversely affected by the MVET option's failure: Senators Andy Hill (R-Redmond), Joe Fain (R-Auburn), and Steve Litzow (R-Mercer Island).
Senators Tom, Hill, Fain, and Litzow: the Four Horsemen of Buspocalypse.
