Washington state legislators—specifically, the state Senate—must pass a transportation funding package as soon as is practical in order to ensure the road projects that need to be completed are carried out in a timely manner. 

Criticism easily could be distributed evenly across the Senate floor, and the fact that the Senate failed even to bring its $12.3 billion transportation package to a vote is perplexing at best. We won’t get into the minutia of the impasse here, because it mostly amounts to ideological clutter. The time for finger-pointing has passed, and now is when state senators must do what politicians are supposed to do and find a compromise that will put money into the planned projects. 

The state House of Representatives did that. Unfortunately, the House’s work was all for naught. As one Spokane senator put it, the Senate couldn’t muster the political will to bring it to a vote. That lack of will, however, doesn’t jibe with the Spokane business community’s demonstrated passion to have these projects come to fruition. 

The House bill included $750 million to extend the North Spokane Corridor to Interstate 90 from just north of Francis Avenue where it currently ends abruptly. The project, decades in planning, would create a necessary thoroughfare that would take a large volume of commercial traffic and others off Division Street and other north-south city streets, easing congestion. 

The worry is that the window of opportunity for securing funding for this project will close. While that isn’t the case yet, the project has had unprecedented momentum in recent years that a large chunk of funding would increase. About $680 million has been invested in the freeway so far, and it would be a disservice to the Spokane community if that forward progress grinded to a halt.

While much of the focus rightfully is on the North Spokane Corridor, a number of other projects could receive funding through a state transportation bill. Those include the widening of state Route 904 between I-90 and Cheney, construction of an I-90 interchange on the West Plains, and continued widening of I-90 to the Washington-Idaho border. 

Short term, each of these projects would create much-needed construction jobs for a sector that has emerged in the last couple of years from a protracted slump. It would be better to have at least some of those workers gearing up for jobs now and for the industry to be fretting about an anticipated worker shortage due to an upswing in projects, but it doesn’t have that luxury just yet.

Retiring Greater Spokane Incorporated President and CEO Rich Hadley says the ideal scenario would have a comprehensive transportation funding package being adopted no later than January 2015 that includes money for projects mentioned above. 

Legislators should consider that not just a goal, but a deadline. The more time that goes by, the more their reasoning sounds like weak excuses. Get this done.