[AUIDO REPORT] Lawmakers in the state House OK’d a thirteen-and-a-half billion dollar transportation budget Monday with strong bipartisan support. Dan Frizzell from the House Democratic Caucus has more.
Transcript:
One week after majority Democrats on the House Transportation Committee rolled out their biennial spending plan, the full chamber approved it Monday with a near-unanimous 96-to-one floor vote. The committee chair, Tacoma Representative Jake Fey, worked across the aisle with minority Republicans to craft the budget, which mixes new projects with continued work on two major transportation efforts, last year’s Move Ahead Washington and the 2015 Connecting Washington project. Those combined plans, lawmakers said, are designed to keep people and freight moving with improvements spread out over the coming two decades. Here’s Fey shortly after Monday’s vote:
FEY: “It’s a bipartisan bill, and we really appreciate the fact that our Republican counterparts worked well with us to try to come up with a budget that serves the entire state’s needs. I’m very proud of the work that we’ve done; it was a group effort, and I’m looking forward to seeing the Senate budget and working with them to come up with hopefully an even better budget for the citizens of the state of Washington.” [:22]
Highlights of the budget, and a $10 billion dollar allocation to supplement the biennial budget approved in 2021, include funds to move ahead with the much-needed replacement for the interstate bridge on I-5 connecting Washington and Oregon; reducing the transportation sector’s carbon footprint; improving safety on corridors throughout the state; investing in the state ferry fleet and expanding its workforce; and investing millions of dollars to help the Washington State Patrol recruit and train a new generation of troopers. In Olympia, Dan Frizzell.