Washington state gas tax to increase despite voters’ thumbs down

Washington voters rejected a gas-tax increase Tuesday by a 2-1 margin, but they will pay the tax anyway.

The “advisory” vote is nonbinding and won’t stop the state gas tax by rising 11.9 cents per gallon, as the Legislature approved last summer. In fact, a 7-cent jump has already taken effect, with 4.9 cents to be added next July.

Advisory votes are the brainchild of initiative promoter Tim Eyman. Voters required them for all tax increases as part of a 2007 Eyman measure.

The package includes extending state Route 167 to the Port of Tacoma and widening Interstate 5 along Joint Base Lewis-McChord, and it won bipartisan support last summer after years of debate.

The ballot questions for advisory votes don’t explain what higher taxes pay for – other than “government spending” – and they draw attention to how the Legislature imposed the taxes “without a vote of the people.” The not-so-neutral language makes it hard to draw conclusions from their outcomes.

Wording doesn’t doom all advisory votes. Voters soundly rejected the gas tax and a package of business taxes that helped balance the state’s operating budget, and they were narrowly opposing taxes on oil transportation by railroad. But they gave big support to taxing marijuana.

Voters could have forced a binding referendum on the gas-tax law through a petition campaign, the secretary of state’s office said, but the deadline for a referendum has now passed. However, a referendum likely wouldn’t have prevented the first increase in the gas tax, and it’s unclear if it would have affected the second increase next summer. That’s because lawmakers declared an “emergency” in the law, making much of it immune to referendum.

A ballot initiative to cancel the taxes, while still possible, is a tougher challenge requiring twice as many signatures as a referendum.

Tax hikes are less noticeable at the pump because they come at a time of low gas prices. And many voters fed up with Puget Sound traffic may feel more warmly to taxes upon learning which highway projects they pay for.

“There’s no groundswell of ‘We want to get rid of this’ coming from anybody that I’ve talked to, either side of the aisle,” said Rep. Judy Clibborn, D-Mercer Island, who led the effort for a transportation package along with Sen. Curtis King, R-Yakima.

But Eyman said voters have figured out that lawmakers have “rigged the game” with tactics such as declaring emergencies, which is why he says advisory votes are needed. The lack of a petition drive “doesn’t mean they don’t care,” he said.

-This post has been updated to correct the effect of a referendum on the gas-tax law. Lawmakers made much of the law immune to a referendum.

This story was originally published November 5, 2015 at 2:50 AM with the headline "Washington state gas tax to increase despite voters’ thumbs down."