It’s two budgets down and one to go in Olympia, thanks to bipartisan approval of an amended state transportation budget Wednesday. Dan Frizzell has that story.
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Wrap (:74 total): The final OK adds about five hundred million dollars to the historic eight-point-one billion dollar plan adopted last year. Those extra dollars are spread throughout the state — improving freight mobility, fixing aging bridges, adding a new back-up ferry, and giving a much-needed raise to the troopers and officers of the Washington State Patrol. The highest-profile investment in the supplemental budget is earmarked for the most congested roadway in the state, I-405 on the east side of Lake Washington. House Transportation Chair Judy Clibborn, a Mercer Island Democrat who lives near that roadway and knows its problems first-hand, says the budget is good news for frustrated commuters.
CLIBBORN: “We have instructed the commission to do away with tolling on weekends and holidays and evenings. We have instructed the tolling department to look at making access easier at all the choke points. And we’ve also asked them to come back with a plan for us to use those tolls to build added capacity so that the general-purpose lanes work better.” [:22].
The supplemental transportation budget, which doesn’t call for new taxes, has now been approved by both chambers of the Legislature, and has been sent to Governor Inslee to be signed into law. In Olympia, I’m Dan Frizzell.