Okay. Anytime. Yeah, specific question.
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Welcome everyone to episode number two of the County Connection podcast. I'm Paul Jewell,
the government relations director for the Washington State Association of Counties,
and I'm back in the studio, which is really just Eric Johnson's old office
here at the Wasack building in downtown Olympia. But I'm here with Axel Swanson again. Axel is
the managing director for the Washington State Association of County Engineers. Welcome back,
Axel. It's good to see you. Thanks, Paul. Thanks for having me back for week two. Yeah, it's hard
to believe it's already week two. And today you want to talk about some specific transportation
legislation. Is that right? Yeah, I think we had a good conversation last week about sort of the
overview of the state budget and the potential impacts it would have for us, the county level,
and then some revenue priorities we're looking for. And so this week, one of those has come
forward through a bill, has a hearing today, and thought it might be of interest to talk about more
specifically. Well, what bill is that exactly? House Bill 1098, sponsored by Representative Lowe,
and it's going to be heard at four o'clock in the House Transportation Committee.
Representative Lowe has been a great friend to counties this year, and this is another example
of that. Of course, Representative Lowe is also a member of the Washington State Association of
Counties, being a council member from Stahomish County. So just a little shout out there to
Representative Lowe. Thanks for all your help. So tell us a little bit about this bill. You
mentioned it has a hearing today. This is a good one for county roads and county transportation.
Why don't you dive into a bit of the details? Yeah. And to tell the story about this bill,
we've got to kind of go back, I guess, roughly a year or so or even farther. But this bill
largely came from a study that the County Road Administration Board had worked on. They had gotten
some funding through the 23-25 biennial budget, and that funding helped them to hire a consultant
and work on kind of doing something that I think is fairly noble. They took an inward look at their
grant programs to see how effective they were for us at the counties, see if they could make any
changes and improve them, and also see if there was any gaps. And so this bill really comes out
of that study and the primary recommendation, which it turned out there is some significant
funding gaps for some of or most of the county roads. So you mentioned the County Road
Administration Board. You've kind of alluded to the fact that they manage some grant programs
for us. They've done this study that this bill is based on. But for the new listener, for the new
county commissioner, who maybe just took office in January, what is the County Road Administration
Board and what do they do? Yeah. So the County Road Administration Board is very unique if you
look nationally. I think we're the only state that has sort of that equivalent or type of an agency.
But it is a state agency. Its purpose is to have oversight responsibility for county road departments.
But they act very much as a partner in that. And in fact, their board is made up of county
commissioners and county engineers. And one of their primary functions that they do that
that we are very interested in is they have some grant programs that are available to us
and that help us with the preservation and maintenance of the county transportation system.
So they have the RAP program and the CAP program. That's rural arterial program and
CalMessup the CAP program. But regardless, those two primary, there's some other programs,
but I want to just focus on those two specifically. So the RAP program is a very good program. It's
competitive. It's prioritized. So you apply and your project would be selected. What does RAP stand for again?
Rural arterial. Rural arterial. Yes. And now these are classifications of roadways, but you know,
an arterial would be functionally as a road classification or function. Think of kind of
a main thoroughfare or connector, higher average daily traffic. We call it ADT. Kind of an important
functional road for the system connection. Now the CAP program is more straightforward.
It's the CAP. So the CAP is arterial preservation program. Right. Isn't that county arterial
preservation program, CAPP? Yes. I've got a ton of acronyms. And so yes, the CAP program
functionally works much more straightforward. So through the CAP program, counties receive a
distribution of motor vehicle fuel tax for the preservation of their roads. But that's based upon
some things that they have to do to show that they have a preservation plan and they have to certify
that they have that. They have to submit that and they have to be in what's called a standing of
good practice. And so that's kind of where some of the oversight role for the County Road Administration
Board comes in is making sure that, you know, we're checking in the box as a department on the state
requirements rules and other things so that we can receive the funding. So they have these funding
programs that they manage for counties for really what are classified as arterial roads. But then
they also do some oversight to make sure that there are standards, what you called standards
of good practice in place in county public works departments across the state. Yeah. And, you know,
a lot of that responsibility rests with the county engineer position and then with public works
directors and other, you know, other supervisors and managers throughout the public works department.
Okay. So that's the group that did the study essentially that this bill is based on that you
wanted to talk about today. The County Road Administration Board did sort of an inward looking
study over the course of this last interim to see how well their grant programs were functioning
and if they were benefiting, you know, counties as they should be or if there was room for improvement
and then also to look for funding gaps and the funding gap piece is kind of what I want to get
to because the number one recommendation there was that in fact there is no state or federal funding
for the vast majority of county roads which are local access roads. So when you say that there
isn't a lot of funding for the vast majority of county roads and then you said what did you call
them? Local access roads. Also, you know, maybe we touched on this last week but for the listener
who might just be tuning in, counties are responsible for almost half of all the bridges in Washington
State but bridges when we talk about bridges often we're talking about bridges that are
long enough, in this case over 20 feet, so that they have to be reported to the National Bridge
Inventory and they're on sort of this federal list. There's a lot of bridges in our state,
specifically county-owned ones that are under 20 feet so when we talk about local access roads
we're actually talking about short span bridges as well, bridges that are under 20 feet. So we've
got short span bridges that are part of this gap that was identified and those are bridges that
are under 20 feet. Anything over that goes on this national registry that you were talking about. I
assume there's other funding programs for that, that's why it goes on there. Correct. And then
you also mentioned this other type of road because when you were first talking about CRAB, which is
what we all refer to as the County Road Administration Board, you talked about the RAP program and the CAP
program which are for arterials that you said are like main thoroughfares, you know, made like major
county roads. Is this other classification that you're talking about, is that a different type
of road or does that include arterials or what does that mean? No, yeah, it would be a different
designation, lower average daily traffic and not categorized in that way so it could, you know,
so it's eligible for that funding. And so the the study showed that there was there wasn't any
funding support for that classification of road and you're saying that's the majority of county
roads? Yeah, correct. So we kind of went over this a bit last week but just as a reminder counties are
responsible for well over half of all the lane miles and or just road miles in the state. So lane
miles, you know, we have over 78,000, I think we're just over 39,000 road miles and so when you look
at those miles that we take care of, 49,000 of those are local access roads or 39% of the entire
roadways in Washington State. So there's a lot of ways to look at this but I mean if you just think
of 39% of all the roads in Washington State are local access roads and are not eligible, you know,
largely for federal or state funding, they are dependent on us at the county being able to take
care of them with local revenue and you and I have had that talk and we'll probably continue to talk
about the challenges we have around local revenue at the county level. Well that's a huge portion
then of the roads that counties have and that the residents basically depend on just to get around.
Absolutely and one of the things that I'm challenged with and I get frustrated with is just
that county roads or city roads or state roads, the people that we work for, the citizens of
Washington State, the people that drive on these roads, they don't care who owns the road and so
it's really important that we look at this holistically as a transportation system
and that people can transition from a state highway to a county road to a city street to
their driveway seamlessly and safely and if 39% or sorry 36% of all the lane miles in the state
are these local access roads and we're depending on property tax capped at 1% plus construction to
fund them, well you know we're trending in the wrong direction so that's my hope. We can get
something established with House Bill 1090, a new program. This bill would not fund the program,
we still have to work with the legislature and within the transportation budget to get this
funded long term but I think it brings awareness to the issue and it establishes the framework to
get us in a better position. Okay well so this bill, just to recap really quickly, this bill
based on a study that was done by the Crab Board creates a program to help provide funding for a
huge portion of the roads that there really isn't any funding for, right? Correct. Now other than
our local funding but we know gas taxes and decline and property tax is not keeping up. So
let's dive a little deep into some of the specifics here as far as you know what counties, what our
members can actually, will actually be able to use this program for. So obviously the program
and the bill are fairly new if the bill is passed. So in rough form like I said this is for local
access roads, this also includes short span bridges and if you think about short span bridges, we talk
about bridges that are less than 20 feet, we're getting into now a conversation around a whole
bunch of fish barrier removal projects potentially that are going to move forward. So fish barriers
could be part of this funding program? Well certainly if there's a local access road and it
has a culvert that is blocking fish passage, it could potentially be part of the overall project
or the I think the project itself. Some of the reason we're laughing and go back and forth about
the details is this is a bill that would change RCW to create the account for the program and it
does have a rough outline of the program, the type of roads and projects that are eligible,
some of the requirements to be eligible, some of the criteria. So you know looking at the
project specifically as it relates to its positive impact on overburdened communities,
things like that, but there's a lot of details left out because the county road administration
board as a state agency would have to go through some rule making to kind of really put that
program together. Just broadly though what types of projects are we talking about like resurfacing
of a local road or we talk about replacing the bridge, are we talking about routine maintenance,
like you know a lot of local roads get chip seal treatments every few years, are we talking about
that type of project or are we talking about you know tearing the whole thing up and replacing it,
what about a brand new road, what about taking a gravel road to pavement, are all of those the
types of projects that would be eligible under this program or not? Yeah I mean I think I believe so,
I think each of those things you mentioned would depend on the application and how that road and
the let's call it solution for the roadway fits in with the criteria, but yeah you know anything
it could be rebuilding the road, it could be you know converting or changing what's a current fish
passage barrier to a short span bridge or in some cases it'll probably have to be a 20 foot bridge,
but the point being that you know anytime we're going to do preservation and maintenance on a
roadway it's going to it's going to improve the long-term outlook for deferred maintenance.
We know the farther we go behind on deferred maintenance and the farther in between doing
some of the preventative things the overall how much the overall cost goes up is astronomical so
I think all those things you mentioned would be part of this, but like I said some of the details
are not in the bill because they'll be part of the rule making around the program. But the idea is to
make it sounds like the idea is to make it pretty flexible. Yeah hopefully that's always one of our
goals. Now you mentioned that this bill doesn't actually fund the program. Where is the funding
supposed to come from? The initial bill as I understand it would establish the program in
this biennium and I think there is a if I recall it's five million dollar request, but in the next
biennium I think we would be looking for something more like 40 million because we need to get the
program started, we need to get the rules and criteria set up for the program, but then we
would need a more significant capital appropriation to really start taking applications and doing
projects. Where would that funding come from? I think we're going to be looking at that moving
forward and tracking closely with some of the conversation you and I had last week on where
the state goes with transportation revenue overall this session and for the biennium.
So you said a five million dollar appropriation hopefully to get it started then 40 million
dollars after that. That sounds like a lot of money but for two guys like us that have dealt
in the public sector for a long time and you know have watched the cost of road construction
maintenance just explode over time much faster right than regular inflation in many cases and
certainly a lot faster than the property tax revenues can increase year over year to take
care of it. It doesn't seem like quite enough when we're talking about 39 percent of the county road
miles that currently exist. Is the idea behind this funding to kind of be the sole source for
maintaining and updating those roadways or are counties supposed to be bringing their own funds
to the table along with these resources? Yeah good question. No this will not be a sole source that's
going to fix you know every local access road that's in bad shape you know that 36 percent of
all roads in the state we talked about. This is you know a program that's aimed to help us with
the negative situation we're facing with our local revenue sources both the property tax not keeping
up and the gas tax distributions that are forecasted to decline and then you know moving forward I
think I think ideally what this program would do is capture those highest priority local access
roads right. It's a competitive program. There is a match requirement we could talk a little
bit about that you know I don't think from our position we're opposed to state grant programs
having a match requirement. We understand that oftentimes the state or the the federal partners
want us to put some of our own local funding in to the project but you know we've talked
before and can talk more about the challenges local jurisdictions face with that as well. Yeah
for sure. Well Axel it sounds like a great program. It sounds like it's something that
you're definitely supporting. It sounds like it provides some really desperately needed resources
for something that the CRAB study identified as as a gap in support for the county road system
that currently is in place. You said this bill is going to have a hearing today so I assume
we'll be providing some comments maybe even some testimony in favor. How can our members get
involved if they also want to throw some support behind this bill? Yeah it's got a hearing today.
House transportation at four o'clock. It's house bill 1098. If you you know want to start tracking
it and see how it goes I will be there. I am signed up to testify likely saying many of the
things that we've talked about in this conversation and then you know we we hope for a senate companion
bill so hopefully stay tuned and and if you sign up to track this bill hopefully there'll be a
senate companion bill that will also get a hearing and and then moving along. We hope that the bill
makes progress and makes it through to the finish line by the end of session. Well thanks again for
joining us today Axel. It's been great chatting with you. I learned a lot about county roads.
Certainly learned a lot about county road classifications. I hope our listeners did too
and I hope you'll join us again maybe in a week or two and we'll dive into something else on
transportation systems. Does that work for you? That sounds great Paul. Thanks for having me back
this week and I look forward to maybe next week talking about another bill or some other things
going on with county transportation. Sounds great take care till then. Thanks for tuning
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