SENATE BILL REPORT
ESSB 6072
As Passed Senate, April 26, 2003
Title: An act relating to funding pollution abatement and response.
Brief Description: Funding pollution abatement and response.
Sponsors: Senate Committee on Highways & Transportation (originally sponsored by Senators Horn and Haugen).
Brief History:
Committee Activity: Highways & Transportation: 4/10/03 [DPS, DNP].
Passed Senate: 4/26/03, 42-6.
SENATE COMMITTEE ON HIGHWAYS & TRANSPORTATION
Majority Report: That Substitute Senate Bill No. 6072 be substituted therefor, and the substitute bill do pass.
Signed by Senators Horn, Chair; Swecker, Vice Chair; Finkbeiner, Haugen, Jacobsen, Kastama, Oke, Prentice and Spanel.
Minority Report: Do not pass.
Signed by Senators Benton, Vice Chair; and Mulliken.
Staff: Mike Groesch (786-7434)
Background: Prior to 2000, each owner of a motor vehicle paid a $2 per vehicle clean air excise tax at the time of initial vehicle registration or renewal. Funds from this fee were used to implement provisions of the Clean Air Act.
Currently, there is a tug boat at the entrance of the Straight of Juan de Fuca, which is used during part of the year to rescue disabled vessels in order to prevent oil spills in the event a vessel goes aground.
Summary of Bill: Eighty five percent of the proceeds deposited in the segregated subaccount of the air pollution control account are distributed to local air pollution control authorities and 15 percent of the proceeds are distributed to the Department of Ecology. The funds are used to retrofit school buses with exhaust emission control devices, reduce vehicle emissions, reduce air contaminants, and to provide funding for fueling infrastructure to allow school bus fleets to use alternative cleaner fuels.
The Department of Ecology must provide a report to the legislative transportation committees on the progress of the implementation of the programs funded by the fee deposited in the segregated subaccount of the air pollution control account by December 31, 2004.
Proceeds deposited in the vessel response account are used to fund a tug boat at the entrance of the Straight of Juan de Fuca whose primary mission is to arrest the drift of disabled vessels in order to prevent a spill.
Beginning with the effective date of the act, and until July 1, 2008, the fees collected under RCW 46.12.080, 46.12.170, and 46.12.181 are credited as follows:
(i) 58.12 percent is credited to a segregated subaccount of the air pollution control account in RCW 70.94.015;
(ii) 15.71 percent is credited to the vessel response account created in section 3 of this act; and
(iii) the remainder is credited into the transportation 2003 account (nickel account).
Beginning July 1, 2008, and thereafter, the fees collected under RCW 46.12.080, 46.12.170, and 46.12.181 are credited to the transportation 2003 account (nickel account).
The vessel response account expires in 2008. The distribution of the air pollution control account created in this act expires in 2008.
Appropriation: $10,000,000 to the Department of Ecology from the air pollution control account, $2,876,000 to the Department of Ecology from the vessel response account, and $200,000 from the oil spill prevention account.
Fiscal Note: Not requested.
Effective Date: Ninety days after adjournment of session in which bill is passed.
Testimony For: The bill restores clean air funding eliminated by I-695. Please extend the expiration date of the bill. Please do not constrict uses of the clean air account to just school buses. Please add the ability to accept federal funds to the vessel account.
Testimony Against: None.
Testified: PRO: Mike Moore, Puget Sound Steamship Operators; Mike Harbour, Washington State Transit Association; Randy Winders, Intercity Transit; Gordon Baxter, Inland Boatmen's Union, ILWU; Mike Ryherd, Puget Sound Clean Air Agency; Nick Federici, American Lung Association of Washington; Bruce Wishart, People for Puget Sound; Jim Boldt, Port of Tacoma; Steve Robinson, Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission; Peter Thein, Washington State Transit Association.