— from Aaron Wasser —
Sen. Kevin Ranker, D-Orcas Island, released the statement below following the passage of a statewide transportation plan Monday from the State Senate:
“There is no doubt that every corner of our state is in dire need of transportation investments. That is not up for debate. What is up for debate is the method we employ to make those investments.
“I am very concerned that this plan comes at the expense of our kids and our environment.
“This plan is funded in part by taking almost a billion dollars away from money targeted for education and from money dedicated to cleaning up toxics in our environment.
“We already have very difficult education funding decisions to make and a Supreme Court order to fulfill. I question the wisdom of taking almost a billion dollars away from education before we have even had a chance to make additional investments.
“I also believe investing in transportation at the expense of our environment is a false choice. In addition to taking money away from the environmental cleanup account, this proposal unfortunately includes a poison pill that would reroute millions of dollars in transit investments into pavement if the Governor takes action on climate change.
“For these reasons, I joined all 23 Democratic senators in proposing a clean transportation package, one that gets Washington moving by building critical infrastructure and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs without seriously impacting our schools or the health of our communities.
“Unfortunately that clean proposal was not accepted.”
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I for one would be more than willing to pay additional taxes if that money would go to funding education and cleaning up our environment so my adult children and grandchildren would live in a better environment than we have now. Our way of funding education is a joke. I would prefer to see a few pot holes on the roads than have to vote for special levies to fund education. Education is one of the most important items we can fund. And all of the education in the world won’t do any good if we don’t have a clean environment for these well-educated people to live in. Everyone complains about paying taxes, yet they also want more and more to be paid for. Where do they think the money comes from? I think we also get upset on a national level when we see the big pay raises congress votes for themselves when we have homeless people, undernourished children, etc.