By Stacey Mulick
The News Tribune (Tacoma, Washington)
Copyright 2007 The News Tribune
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
TACOMA, Wash. — Ambulances carrying patients to the hospital, police cars taking suspects to jail, and firetrucks heading to calls might have to pay tolls as they cross the new Tacoma Narrows bridge.
The possibility has Pierce County officials, including Sheriff Paul Pastor and Executive John Ladenburg, fired up and spreading the word to lobby against the idea.
“It is silly to have us pay an admission fee to save lives,” Pastor said last week.
“I understand they want to pay the bridge debt, but they are, by this policy, creating a far more urgent problem and creating a potentially dangerous situation.”
Members of the state Transportation Commission — a seven-member citizen board charged with setting highway tolls and ferry fares — have talked informally about who should be exempt from paying to cross the bridge but have made no final decision.
They’ll take up the issue again Monday as part of a formal proposal that will include the toll costs. The proposal will be open to public comment over the next five weeks.
The commission has discussed giving state Department of Transportation maintenance vehicles servicing the bridge and Washington State Patrol troopers who work near it a break on the tolls, said Reema Griffith, the commission’s executive director.
Other emergency vehicles and first responders would have to get $10 transponders — windshield-mounted devices that automatically deduct toll payments from electronic accounts — and pay the toll fees, likely to be $1.50.
If ambulance, fire or police crews are responding to emergency calls with their vehicles’ lights and sirens on, the agencies later could apply to the Transportation Department for credit to their accounts, Griffith said.
At least that’s where the initial discussion among commissioners was heading.
“They haven’t decided anything yet,” Griffith said. “It appears they were uncomfortable granting full exemptions.”
‘A COST FOR EVERYBODY’
The commissioners want to make sure there’s enough money to make the debt payments on the $849 million bridge, she said.
“It’s going to be a cost for everybody,” Griffith said. “If we don’t have enough toll revenue coming in, then some highway projects could be compromised. We certainly don’t want to go in the red.”
Griffith said the commission could re-examine the toll exemptions after the first year.
Pierce County’s 2007 budget didn’t set aside money to buy transponders to equip scores of patrol cars and other county vehicles or to pay for tolls.
“It really never was part of the conversation,” County Council chairman Terry Lee said. “We had assumed, shame on us, that first responders and public service vehicles would be given a bye.”
Ladenburg said the county’s law enforcement accounts don’t have the money to pay the tolls.
“This is just an added expense that is not reasonable,” he said.
If local and county governments aren’t exempt from a state charge, it wouldn’t be the first time. Government agencies must pay the state gas tax, which pays for transportation projects.
There are exemptions for buses, federal government vehicles, military equipment and government-owned vehicles used on road improvement projects, and publicly owned firefighting equipment that fill up with diesel fuel.
But the idea of paying for transponders and tolls is aggravating local officials, who plan to take their complaints to the commission and its citizen advisory committee.
“The county is on both sides of that bridge,” Ladenburg said. “It seems silly for government to be charging government.”
Sheriff Pastor said he doesn’t mind that State Patrol troopers would be exempt. However, he points out, other local police and fire departments help the State Patrol and each other on a routine basis. Tacoma, Gig Harbor and Pierce County fire and police cars also respond to criminal activity, suicidal suspects and traffic accidents reported on the bridge.
“In order to help out your brother or sister, we have to pay the admission charge first,” Gig Harbor Police Chief Mike Davis said. “The bridge is charging us to come to their assistance.”
While fighting the possibility of paying tolls, officials also are starting to grapple with equipping their fleets with the transponders so ambulance drivers, firefighters and police officers don’t have to pay the fee out of their pockets.
Agencies can get the first six transponders for free, then must pay $10 per device. Transponders are tied to specific vehicles and cannot be transferred among a fleet of cars.
“It’s really difficult for us to issue cash,” said Gig Harbor assistant fire chief Eric Watson. “We don’t want employees to have to cough up the money.”
The Gig Harbor Fire Department is considering putting transponders in each of its more than 45 firetrucks, engines, medic units and administrative vehicles. Watson estimated the medic units cross the bridge about 10 times a day to take patients to Tacoma-area hospitals for treatment of minor to life-threatening injuries.
“It’s not a huge issue,” Watson said of the costs. “It’s more of an irritant.”
Gig Harbor Police Chief Davis estimates his officers make 15 to 20 trips a week across the bridge to take prisoners to and from municipal court hearings, book suspects into the Pierce County Jail and attend meetings and training sessions.
“They are all activities that are required and are necessary in the provision of public safety,” he said.
He’s also considering putting transponders in the department’s 17 vehicles.
Pastor said his patrol vehicles, detectives and supervisors probably make dozens of trips a day over the bridge. Deputies patrol unincorporated areas of Pierce County on both sides of the bridge. They also provide backup to Gig Harbor police, respond to emergencies on the bridge and work on speciality units such as the SWAT and clandestine lab teams.
Pastor also didn’t know how many cars would need to be equipped with transponders and how much the equipment and tolls would cost, though he said it could be in the tens of thousands of dollars.
‘A TERRIBLE BURDEN’
Ladenburg raised the possibility of tolls for first responders last week to the mayors of Pierce County cities and the Puget Sound Regional Council of Governments, a group of elected officials from county and city governments in Pierce, King, Snohomish and Kitsap counties.
“It’s going to affect all the cities and counties,” Ladenburg said. “It’s going to be a terrible burden on all kinds of local government.”
Other government agencies are watching what the Transportation Commission does with tolling on the new Narrows bridge because it would signal policies on other toll projects in the future.
“It’s not just about the Narrows bridge,” Ladenburg said. “They are setting a tolling policy that may be in place for the next 30 to 40 years.”