Prop 1 is a last resort effort to pay for public transit in King County. It is a last resort because all other rational alternatives have been closed by the Replican dominated state legislature. I will vote for this but am pissed off at having to do so.
The Prop would add .1% to the sales tax in King County and $60 to the car tabs. Of that money, 40% goes for roads so that 60% is based on the chancy argument that supporting buses decreases the need for roads.
The effect of course is to tax the less well off to pay for something that disproportionately benefits the well off.
To start with, taxing all cars at the same rate is regressive. Many people need their junkers to get to work so a flat $60 tab is regressive.
The alternative might be to raise fares. Fares are only regressive in the same sense as we pay fees to use cell phones or take a ferry. We could have, if the politicians willed it, a mileage based fee for cars or have more toll roads.
The problem with this argument is that it lets the group that profits most from transit get of scot free. This is esp true of developers whose buyers/tenants depend on urban bus service. To use one small example, the developers along the light rail line will become very wealthy. Amazon’s new campus will only work if its employees have easy access. As for Microsoft, how much does it already cost them to run their private transit system, “The Connector?”
The sensible argument for subsidizing mass transit, it seems to me, is that mass transit, certainly urban mass transit, benefits the entire community. It is a form of infrastructure like roads, schools and the UW itself. It might be pertinent to ask how well Bellevue Square would do if shoppers needed to pay tolls to use the roads that go there?