Seattle/King County Climate News
Robin Briggs
Seattle
The Mayor proposed renewing and enlarging the Seattle Transit Measure. The Seattle Transit Measure began in 2014 as a way for the city to boost bus service, and was funded by a surcharge on car tabs. When it came up for renewal in 2020, the Eyman initiative rolling back car tabs was still in place, and the council passed a smaller measure based on an increase in the sales tax. During the pandemic, when it was not always possible to fund bus service hours, much of the funding was diverted to road maintenance. The Mayor proposes to double the sales tax to .3% (three tenths of a percent). According to Publicola, "The extra money would fund 280,000 bus service hours a year on top of Metro’s regular service ... the new funding would also pay for service on the existing streetcars that run between downtown and South Lake Union and Capitol Hill, and would provide free annual transit passes to everyone living in Seattle Housing Authority buildings." Because of inflation, the number of extra bus service hours is still less than the 350,000 extra hours we got in 2014. This will be on the ballot in November.
The Washington Court of Appeals overruled King County Superior Court allowing two challenges to the Comprehensive Plan's Environmental Impact Statement to proceed. One of the cases argues that the environmental review failed to properly address the impacts from additional housing, while the other argues that the environmental review failed to take into account impacts of additional housing for the Southern Resident orca population. These cases will now go forward to court. (see this article from The Urbanist for more details on the cases).
Sound Transit
Sound Transit made some major cutbacks and reprioritizations as a result of a $34B shortfall over 20 years. The extensions to Everett and Tacoma, the West Seattle line, the second downtown tunnel, and the Graham St. infill station will be funded, but the Ballard line will go only to Seattle Center. Kirkland-Issaquah is still on the priority list, but not to be completed before 2050. Dan Strauss had put forward an amendment to build Ballard to Westlake and use the existing downtown tunnel from there; that was voted down on the rationale that it would open a risk to Federal funding because it would require reopening the Environmental Impact Statement. Sound Transit will do the planning for the Ballard line, which will help to open up an opportunity to fund it later, but the incentive for Snohomish or Pierce Counties to help pay for it look small.
King County
King County approved a .1% sales tax increase to fund road maintainance. They were considering a county-wide transit measure similar to Seattle's, but that seems to be not going forward. The new measure for roads is expected to raise $100M, with some being kept by the county to fund roads in unincorporated areas, and some being passed through to localities for them to use in road maintenance. Even so, this will raise only half of the money that is needed on an annual basis for road maintenance.
State
The State is holding hearings on the next set of updates to the residential building Energy Codes. These codes specify the level of efficiency required in new or remodeled smaller multi-family or single-family dwellings. Buildings are one of our largest sources of climate pollution, and a set of codes that encourage or mandate electrification reduce both the carbon emissions and the costs of transition down the road.
Elsewhere
New York delayed and weakened key provisions of its 2019 climate law, in the name of promoting affordability. The original law would have allowed the state to levy fines on polluters. These fines are similar to what is paid here in WA under the Climate Commitment Act. New York State has delayed implementation of the 2019 law, was successfully sued, and is now putting off implementation until 2030, as well as relaxing the way that methane emissions will be counted. The governor is concerned about the costs being passed on consumers.
Seventy percent of Americans are opposed to data centers near where they live, according to a new study from Heatmap Pro. "An outright majority of Americans are now strongly opposed to data center construction in their area. Young people, Democrats, and rural voters are more hostile to the projects, but they are broadly unpopular with Americans ... The new polling shows that skepticism of data centers is widespread across all age groups, political parties, and regions of the country." Last September, Americans were evenly divided on this.