President’s Budget Cuts Sound Transit Funding
Mike Lindblom, The Seattle Times [$]:
Sound Transit and its allies in Congress say they'll fight a 2018 budget proposal by President Donald Trump that yanks $1.1 billion to build the Lynnwood-Northgate light-rail extension - half of that project's entire funding.
The White House policy change would also remove an anticipated $500 million grant for the Angle Lake-Federal Way extension, scheduled to open in 2024, and 12 other projects still in development.
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The White House policy change would also remove an anticipated $500 million grant for the Angle Lake-Federal Way extension, scheduled to open in 2024, and 12 other projects still in development.
Not a good development for Sound Transit. The agency took an additional step to issue a joint statement with Los Angeles Metro:
"The administration's assertion that our regions can deliver transit solutions for our citizens without federal partnership is uninformed, misguided, and unfair. The voters of our communities stepped up and voted to tax themselves to provide a path out of punishing congestion. For that bold action, they should be rewarded at the federal level, not punished.
It's too soon to speculate what exactly Sound Transit would do if it lost all federal funding. Presidential budgets are typically thrown in the recycling bin by congressional appropriations committees, but at the same time this one does represent the ideological commitments and priorities of a large faction of the Republican party, and the Republican party does have near-complete control of D.C. right now.
Earlier this month, Congress got together on a six-month spending bill that restored funding [$] for Lynnwood link and other local rail projects (such as the Center City Connector streetcar), so it's possible something similar may happen when the budget process resumes.
Meanwhile here in the Other Washington Heidi Groover at The Stranger notes that HB 2201 passed the House in Olympia. The bill would lower car tabs for ST3, costing Sound Transit as much as $2B.