Senate transportation budget reflects enhanced accountability

OLYMPIA — The 2003 Nickel plan and 2005 Transportation Partnership Act (TPA) brought more than new revenue into transportation planning in Washington — they also brought new accountability and efficiency processes that have yielded a long list of projects that are on time and on budget.

“I think that the accountability measures that have kept $1.3 billion worth of projects from the 2003 Nickel plan and the 2005 TPA have paid off big-time,” said Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, who thinks that that the same measures will benefit projects listed in the proposed 2008 supplemental Senate transportation budget.

Haugen, chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, noted that 89 Nickel projects and 36 projects from the Transportation Partnership Act (TPA) have already been completed, and that 57 Nickel & TPA projects are currently under construction or advertised for construction.

“By the end of March, more than half of the projects funded by the Nickel and TPA accounts will either be under construction or completed,” Haugen said. “By the end of the year, we’ll have another 43 projects transportation projects, totaling $400 million, out for bid — we’re really getting a lot done.”

When the 2003 Transportation Package (“Nickel”) was approved, the Legislature instituted new accountability and efficiency processes that included transportation audits by the independent Transportation Performance Audit Board, contracting out of engineering and other transportation services, and a streamlining of the permitting process mandated by Senate Bill 5279.

Two years later, the Legislature augmented those efficiency and accountability measures by making the Department of Transportation directly accountable to the Governor, establishing better benchmarks and milestones to track transportation projects, and providing the State Auditor with funding for additional transportation performance audits.
“It wasn’t I-900 that gave us transportation performance audits, it was the Legislature,” said Haugen. “People all over Washington are seeing the benefits of that decision in the projects that we’ve delivered, and more of them are coming on-line all the time.”

Examples of completed projects from around the state include the $44.6 million project to widen I-5 in Clark county, $50.8 million to add lanes to SR 543 in Whatcom county, $31.2 million to add lanes to SR 270 in Whitman county, and $17.4 million for an all-weather road in Pend Oreille county.

The role of enhanced accountability measures on these and other transportation projects convinced the Legislature that similar measures needed to be applied to the Washington State Ferry (WSF) system. The result was a legislative study that will continue through the 2008 interim, but has already yielded results.

The proposed budget and Senate Bill 6932 — currently under consideration by the House — implement some of the initial recommendations of the study, including instructions to the Washington State Ferry system to develop and maintain a vessel rebuild and replacement plan, as well as a vessel maintenance and preservation program.

“We’ve seen a huge improvement in accountability and project delivery on highway projects in the last couple of years,” said Haugen. “Those are going to help the projects included in this year’s budget, and help turn things around at Washington State Ferries.”

The documents that comprise the Senate Transportation 2008 Supplemental Budget are available online at http://leap.leg.wa.gov/leap/budget/detail/2008/st2008p.asp

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