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Shane Phillips
@ShaneDPhillips
Yikes. It looks like Washington state is considering a tax on new housing, disproportionately paid for by dense urban development, to fund highways that mostly serve the suburbs. It'd make urban housing more expensive *and* subsidize sprawl development in one fell swoop.
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Ryan Packer
@typewriteralley
Housing advocates, the Washington senate transportation package is up for another hearing in committee on Monday morning. It includes a provision taxing the value of new construction, funneling that money ($800 million over 16 years) almost entirely to highway expansion.
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EBomb
@EBomb_NBA
The tweet you cite labels road maintenance as road expansion and ignores the real policy problem of declining gas tax revenue as road maintenance funding. But it does a great job at stoking outrage so it's the perfect tweet.
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Shane Phillips
@ShaneDPhillips
And your tweet implies that most of the money isn't set aside for expansion, and somehow leaps to the conclusion that the solution to declining gas tax revenues is to tax new housing, including urban housing which helps limit per capita greenhouse gas emissions. Bye!
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Michael Hendrickson
@MaytownMichael
I'm struck by the contrast between a state government, which has to pay for infrastructure projects over a reasonable timeframe, and the federal government, which plays with Monopoly money. The state issues bonds for capital projects, of course, but it can't simply print money.
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