Under current state law, the gas tax is a fixed amount per gallon. Indexing the tax to inflation is a recommendation of the City's Transportation Strategic Plan to ensure gas tax revenues keep pace with the increasing costs of maintaining the transportation infrastructure. Updating the formula by which any new gas tax revenues are allocated between counties and cities would also help to keep Seattle's and other cities' per capita revenues from continuing to fall below those of unincorporated areas. Seek voter approval for a local option gas tax . This would amount to 2.3 cents per gallon.
Funds are to be shared with cities under a statutory formula.
This effort was not successful. Furthermore, changes in the means through which the State collects the gas tax appear to have made the local option gas tax administratively impossible to collect, since the State is now collecting the tax from refiners, not wholesalers. Thus, Legislative action to create a practical collection mechanism will also be needed. None of these options was approved. Instead, the Legislature appears to be deferring decisions about new funding options until the report of the Blue Ribbon Commission is received prior to the 2001 Legislative session.