Welcome to County Connection, the official podcast of the Washington State Association
of Counties, where we dive into the legislative issues shaping the future of our communities.
From budgets to public safety, infrastructure to elections, we'll break down what's happening
in Olympia and how it impacts counties from across the Evergreen State.
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Welcome back everybody to our first episode of the County Connection podcast.
I'm Paul Jewell, the government relations director at the Washington State Association
of Counties.
And I'm here with a new guest this time.
I've got Axel Swanson, the managing director of the Washington State Association of County
Engineers.
Now, that's at times been called Wasase here at Wasack, but I think the preferred name
now is Wasacky, and I don't know why.
So I'm going to let Axel introduce himself and maybe tell us why they like to pronounce
their acronym that way.
Axel, how you doing?
I'm doing all right.
We're rounding out a long week.
It's what, Thursday afternoon, and we're heading into Friday, first week of session, and it's
been stacked up and sort of back to back.
So the Wasase versus Wasacky is a, I guess it's been settled.
I have to say it's been settled because my board president is very clear that it's been
settled.
It is Wasacky.
There was a vote taken at a county leaders conference a couple of years ago.
You actually took a vote?
Yeah.
Yeah, they took a vote.
I thought it was Wasase and kind of was in that camp, and that's not the way the vote
went.
It was close, but.
Is there, did the people who voted for Wasacky over Wasase, did they say why they preferred
Wasacky?
Because I mean, if you look at it spelled out W-S-A-C-E, right, makes total sense.
Why the switch?
Because that's the way the vote went, Paul, and you're asking me to explain on a recording
why some of my board members went a certain way and didn't, and I'm not going to do that.
I'm not going there with you.
Okay, I was just wondering why.
It's been very, it's been clear clearly told to me that we're Wasacky right now, so that's
where we're at.
All right.
Okay, well, that's good enough for me, I guess.
Well, thanks for joining us, Axel.
Glad you could take a few minutes out of your busy day.
I know that you, I know we're all busy here at Wasack.
There's a ton going on in Olympia right now.
You mentioned it was day four.
It's Thursday.
We started recording some of these yesterday.
It's hard to believe it's only day four.
It feels like it's already been deep into session as busy as it's been.
And with everything that's been going on, you must be expecting a few things this year.
I'm curious to know what those are and if any of them have started to emerge.
What do you think is going to happen with transportation?
Well, like the rest of what's going on with the legislature and the state budget, both
operating, I just got back from testifying on the Governor Inslee's, outgoing Governor
Inslee's proposed capital budget.
But yeah, the transportation budget is similar.
They're seeing these large gaps between revenue and expenditures.
And there's, as we know, having worked as long as we have for counties and worked on
county budgets, there's only so many options you have, right?
So it's pretty straightforward.
You either increase revenue or you cut expenditures.
And so they're going to be looking at that in the transportation budget, not to as large
of a degree as in the operating budget.
I think last I heard operating budgets looking at $10 billion or so in terms of the gap between
revenue expenditures.
But the transportation budget has similar challenges, mainly around the revenue forecast
that's most recently come out related to our largest revenue source, not county's largest
revenue source, but the state revenue source for transportation, which is motor vehicle
fuel tax.
And that is projected to flatline and even decrease a little bit in the coming years,
which given the cost increases and inflation that we're seeing, creates a massive problem
in both the capital side, capital projects, as well as ongoing maintenance.
So on the operating budget side, a lot of these, well, the deficit is being driven a
lot by rising costs because revenues are still going up, just not at a fast enough rate.
Is that really what you're also seeing on the transportation side?
How much of it is rising costs in materials and projects versus what you just mentioned,
which was this flattening or even declining of the major revenue source?
You know, this is my opinion, but I think I've seen presentations that would back this
up.
I think it's more significant on the transportation side, right?
So we know because we've been doing this a long time and tracking the state budget, roughly
half of the state operating budgets funded by sales tax and sales tax has been doing
pretty well, I think by anybody's account.
If you switch over to the transportation budget, again, most of their transportation budget
is motor vehicle fuel tax.
And if you look at that, right, just we've been working hard to limit emissions and working
on climate initiatives.
And so as cars become more fuel efficient, more electric vehicles are on the road.
They're not putting fuel in the tank and therefore they're not paying gas tax.
So it's sort of this strange thing where, you know, it's associated with a good thing,
a goal, less emissions, less use of fuel.
But when your revenue source is tied to that, it creates a structural problem.
So that's kind of what we're seeing.
So I think when you look at the inflation or increases in costs related to construction
and capital projects, those are going up significantly at the same time that, you know, that major
revenue source is flat.
So it's a combination of the two.
Yeah.
Okay.
So that's the budget.
Looks like you got some challenges there that you're expecting to have to deal with.
What about on the policy side related to transportation?
What do you think is going to be the big talked about issues this year?
Yeah, they're tied together.
I mean, I can definitely touch on some policy bills that have come up as, you know, as recently
as this week already had hearings or are scheduled for hearings next week.
But maybe to close the loop on the local side for us at the county, most of our road fund,
our largest revenue sources from property tax.
And so property tax is capped at 1% plus new construction, very low, slow to no growth.
And then you couple that with what I just talked about with the increase in costs for
capital projects and materials, staffing.
I would say it's fair that, you know, it's fair to say that we're in a worse, if not
the same position as the state on our transportation revenue and funding.
And so we're going to from a policy perspective, we're always going to be looking at that first.
So whether several local revenue ideas out there.
We've got a bill filed already to improve the county road administration boards grant
program.
So we're looking at new funding and a new grant program through them for local access
roads.
There is a draft bill that we've talked about with our legislative steering committee around
a retail delivery fee that would raise revenue and come back to local roads.
And then we have a stakeholder meeting tomorrow afternoon on all the work that's been done
around the initial bill for a road usage charge, which would work to replace the gas tax.
That wouldn't be new revenue, it would be a replacement of gas tax, but it wouldn't
have that structural deficit or challenge that gas tax does.
So the road usage charge is something we've heard a lot, kind of batted around for many,
many years, really for the last decade, but it seems to be kind of coming to a full crescendo
maybe, you know, soon, maybe even this year.
Do you think that's going to be the hot topic?
Is that going to be the big policy issue this year in transportation?
Or do you think this other idea around a retail delivery fee might get better traction?
Yes, I think the road usage charge bill, I expect we will see it in the coming weeks.
We've seen an outline.
There's a meeting tomorrow.
The chair of the House Transportation Committee has said he's going to file the bill.
But you know, I think that'll be one piece of the question, because like I said, the
road usage charge, if it gets to the finish line and it is implemented, it doesn't come
in fast.
It's more of it starts with electric vehicles and then it moves on to hybrids and then,
you know, eventually gets to where it would be the replacement of gas tax for even vehicles
that are still using fuel.
So it's implemented over a number of years.
It doesn't happen right away.
And again, it's just meant to exchange or, you know, take over for the gas tax, no new
revenue.
So while I think a road usage charge is somewhat more controversial or could be controversial
compared to the current system of paying gas tax, and they'll have that conversation,
it doesn't solve their revenue problem.
So they're also going to have to have a secondary conversation around where to find other new
revenue for current transportation priorities and or make cuts or delay projects.
And so I think there'll be multiple revenue conversations going on as it relates to transportation.
So even though the road usage charge has been getting a lot of the headlines and a lot of
the attention, you don't think that's going to be the solution that really they need to
have fully in place for the future of transportation.
There's going to be have there's going to have to be other revenue options on the table.
And those are likely to be discussed this year, too.
Yeah, yep.
I think that's true.
And I think that's why you're seeing, you know, a number of revenue ideas put forward.
And I think there'll be conversations about if or how the state operating budget can help
the state transportation budget.
Well, talking about ideas that are being put forward, we've touched on a few things that
you think are likely to be discussed this year, things that you're expecting to have
to deal with on behalf of counties.
We also have a transportation priority this year, right?
Counties are pushing for some solutions.
Tell us a little bit about that strategy and kind of what what your plans are there.
Yeah, our strategy for transportation funding falls largely in line with the overall association
of counties revenue strategy.
That's for an obvious reason.
The County General Fund is primarily funded with property tax, and so is the road fund.
And so we'll we'll be there on trying to talk with legislators again and more about the
impact of having, you know, our major revenue source capped at one percent along with the
association.
I don't know that that solves all of our our issues, though.
And so I think we're we're content, you know, we have brought forward the retail delivery
fee to the members as a potential new revenue source.
There are two other states that do that.
And there was an extensive study done on that over the over last year in the interim, and
it showed that it would be a real source of revenue.
And the current draft bill would split that 40 percent with cities, 40 with counties and
then 20 percent back to the state.
And I don't know that that alone solves all of our issue either.
And so the primary aspects of our priority are to fix the structural revenue problem
that we have with funding and preserving our our road system.
And so it could include all of those things or one of those things or other things.
And then specifically beneath that or in alignment with that, we've got budget, you know, budget
priorities that also go to our budget problems, which, you know, we have significant amount
of fish barriers that we're responsible for and we're working to replace.
And so we work with the Brian Abbott Fish Barrier Removal Board.
And so we'll be working to get their priority list funded in this next biennium.
And that's one of our priorities, too, is funding for fish barriers.
Yes.
Yeah, absolutely.
So the state's been working hard on replacing their barriers.
But we you know, we have thousands of barriers, as you can imagine, with, you know, counties
are responsible for almost half of the roads in Washington state.
That's seventy eight thousand lane miles.
And when you have that many lane miles, you have a lot of water crossings.
What's important to talk about in that discussion, though, is, you know, if you look at the state,
they don't have nearly the lane miles we do, but they have a lot of ADT, which average
daily traffic.
Well, what else about our legislative priority have you not touched on?
There are definitely other things.
So I already touched on the County Road Administration Board's request.
I touched on the Fish Barrier Removal Board request.
So the governor's proposed budget funded that at forty six million to fund the whole list
over the biennium would take seventy.
So we'll be looking for a larger number than what's initially out there.
And just as a reminder, those are just the the highest level, highest priority projects
that have been someone's applied for them.
They've been vetted through a criteria and put on a prioritized list.
We have many, many more barriers out there that that aren't on that list, obviously.
We will also be looking at safety.
So we haven't touched on safety in this conversation.
And if you look at the Washington State Traffic Safety's dashboard, the the data there is
alarming and it's sad.
We are we are in a traffic safety crisis in terms of the fatalities.
We're seeing a program that was started recently in the move ahead package.
So two years ago in the biennium, that biennium, it started a new program for reducing rural
lane departures.
So if you look at the data, often if there's a fatality, a high percentage of those crashes
happen when a vehicle leaves the roadway or crosses a lane.
And there are a number of things that you can do to try to prevent that, whether it's
guardrails or illumination or, you know, other other safety mechanisms.
And so there is a program, a new program started up with state funding to try to improve some
of those roadways.
And we certainly supported that.
And we're that's one of our big initiatives is to try to double the funding from that.
So that's part of our legislative priority list on transportation as well.
Yeah, we're trying to get at least eight million in that program.
It started out at four.
Oh, well, well, we got a lot of big, a lot of big asks this year, but a lot of important
a lot of important reasons for those asks, seventy eight thousand lane miles not being
the least important part of it.
Well, anything else that you want to add, Axel, when you're looking forward to this
session as far as things that you expect or maybe a few surprises out there that we haven't
heard about?
I would add because you mentioned the lane miles and we talked about that.
Another thing for the maybe the new listener to keep in mind, we we did discuss water crossings
and fish barriers, but counties, because of that number of lane miles, own the most bridges
in the state as well.
So it's just something to always keep that front of mind and think about that.
Bridges are expensive.
They're aging and we have a number of them that, you know, are not in great shape and
need either repair or replacement.
So that's another area we look for funding both from the federal and state government
to help us with.
And then to close maybe or just talk about kind of what's keeping us busy this week is
we never can anticipate or know fully what legislators have in mind and what they're
going to file or what they might want to change.
And so we've been reacting and responding, or I have at least mostly this week to that,
because in our job, we see a lot of really good ideas and well intentioned policy, but
we have to drill down and focus on what the implementation means.
Can we actually achieve it?
Can we make it happen?
How do we make it happen?
What will the cost be or the inefficiency be if our members have to carry that out?
And as you know, we've had some discussions this week, number of bills, and we're kind
of working on amendments around just that understanding that someone has good intentions
is well meaning and actually maybe has a good policy goal.
But the implementation and execution for our members is really challenging maybe without
some word changes in the statute.
Yeah, sometimes it's a long distance from a really great idea that's shaped to achieve
a really good outcome to actually implementing that and making it work on the ground, which
is what counties do, right?
That's what counties do.
That's what county commissioners do.
And that's what our county road departments do every single day.
That's why I've been doing this for 18 years.
It's hard working for counties, but it's exciting because counties are where things happen.
We do a lot of good work every day.
Well thanks for joining us, Axel, on our first episode of County Connections.
As we mentioned at the beginning, this is only day four of a 105 day session.
It's going to be a long one this year.
It goes all the way through nearly the entire month of April.
And once it starts, it doesn't stop.
We were kind of talking at the very beginning here a little bit how little of the weekend
oftentimes you get when you're working during the legislative session.
So it's a bit of a marathon that started on Monday.
And we'll be giving quite a few updates as we go along.
I hope you'll be willing to come back and inform our listeners as things progress.
I will be.
And maybe you can invite me earlier in the week so I'm not so tired.
Well, we'll try.
But as the weeks go on, you never know.
All right.
Well, thanks, Axel.
And thanks everybody for listening in.
We'll see you again soon.