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News / Clark County News

Transportation budget protects major county projects

By Kathie Durbin
Published: May 17, 2011, 12:00am

Clark County fared well in the two-year transportation budget Gov. Chris Gregoire signed Monday.

The budget protects funding for every major project within the county funded by the two gas tax increases the Legislature has enacted since 2003 and keeps all those projects on schedule.

Those include improvements to the Interstate 5-Salmon Creek interchange, the widening of state Highway 14 at Camas and Washougal, continuing work on the Interstate 205-Mill Plain interchange at 18th Street, the complete rebuilding of the Highway 500-St. Johns interchange, the widening of state Highway 502 from I-5 to Battle Ground, and the Vancouver rail bypass.

In all, the transportation package dedicates $258.6 million to projects in Clark County over the next two years, said Mark Brown, lobbyist for the cities of Vancouver, Battle Ground and Ridgefield.

Funding for Clark County projects in 2013-15 will drop to $77 million as many of those projects are completed, he said.

Even with declining gas tax revenue, “we still managed to protect all of our projects in Clark County,” Brown said. “Our legislators did a really good job.”

Rep. Jim Moeller D-Vancouver, who sits on the House Transportation Committee, wrangled $39.7 million for continued design and planning work on the Columbia River Crossing over the next biennium, including $14.7 million in federal transportation dollars sitting in the Washington State Department of Transportation coffers.

“These are not state funds,” Moeller said. “These are savings that WSDOT had from other projects across the state, so I snagged them.”

The budget also incudes $425,000 for a study by a joint legislative transportation committee of potential private-public partnerships and how they might play a role in funding five major transportation projects across the state, including the Columbia River Crossing.

“I’m meeting with the House and Senate transportation leadership tomorrow to see how this might unfold,” Brown said. “The notion of bringing the private sector into some role relative to financing megaprojects is, at a minimum, intriguing.”

Moeller said it’s likely the Legislature will go to voters next year with a new tax package to fund state transportation projects. A 2003 nickel increase in the state gas tax and a 9.5-cent state gas tax increase approved by the Legislature in 2005 and upheld by voters in a referendum has not stretched to cover all the projects it was intended to fund.

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