Seattle: A City Under Siege

"The state has done little to build new highways to accommodate the 484,700 new people who moved into Puget Sound in the 1990s, in part because it would cost upward of $50 billion to do it right. The idea of Washington farmers and longtime Seattleites paying more to make room for newcomers helped ignite the beginnings of a taxpayer revolt. In 1999, voters ap-proved an initiative-I-695-that slashed the traditional source of highway construction funding, the motor vehicle excise tax. The second shoe dropped last November, with the passage of a ballot measure that limits property tax growth to 1% a year, unless authorized by voters. The two measures, with the third whammy of the recession, have left the state in a funding gridlock the likes of which it has never seen."

Thanks to Laura Kranz