.
Story speaks for itself, but as many times and as hard as Queen Chrisy has bent us over for the tribes (Who, thanks to her, make hundreds of millions from their casinos without paying the state a dime) this kind of thing isn't surprising. And, of course, this is our future if the commissioners allow the organized crime entity known as the mega casino to be built.
Summary
While we're all feeling extra pain at the gas pump these days, a KOMO 4 Problem Solver investigation has discovered the state is keeping some million-dollar secrets about your gas taxes.
Story Published: May 5, 2011 at 11:00 PM PDT
Story Updated: May 6, 2011 at 7:41 AM PDT
While we're all feeling extra pain at the gas pump these days, a KOMO 4 Problem Solver investigation has discovered the state is keeping some million-dollar secrets about your gas taxes. Our investigation found the state is paying out millions from the state gas tax, and they won't tell us how the majority of it is being spent.
For whatever financial pinch you might feel when filling up, at least there's consolation knowing that for each gallon purchased, 35 cents goes to the state. That money adds up to the Motor Vehicle Fuel Tax Fund and it all pays for new highways, filling potholes, and fixing roads, right?
Wrong. This year alone, more than $22 million of state gas tax money is heading off the books. It's going straight to local tribes operating their own gas stations.
"Now that just flap dab is wrong," says Tim Hamilton, Executive Director of AUTO, a gasoline retailers organization. "It's not only morally wrong, it's financially wrong."
In 2006, the state lost a local court battle that ruled tribes, as sovereign nations, don't have to pay the gas tax. To end future court battles, the
legislature and Governor Gregoire signed off on a deal: for every gallon a tribe sells, the state pays them back 75 percent of the gas tax, or 28 cents a gallon.
As part of the deal, there's no limit on how many stations the tribes can own or how much gas they can sell.
It's bad news for non-tribal stations.
"There's no way we can compete"
"For the first time in our lives, we have become scared," says Chris Angwood, who with her husband Larry run a mom-and-pop gas station in Grand Mound. "We are in survival mode."
The Angwood's business has been in the family for decades. But Larry Angwood says the nearby tribal stations undercut their prices by 9-to-10 cents a gallon.
"There's no way we can compete...we've gone down as low as I can go," Larry Angwood said. They've laid off employees and are working seven days a week themselves. But there's too few customers, and an uncertain future. "I mean if we lose this business," Chris Angwood said, "we lose everything we own."
Hamilton says it's the largest raid on a public treasury that he could ever imagine can happen.
"Hundreds of millions are on their way out of here," he said. In fact, over the next 17 years, the state Department of Transportation estimates it will give 22 tribes well over half a billion dollars of gas tax revenue - $620,676,200.
Puyallup Tribal Attorney Kelly Croman says this is about the tribe being able to have a tax base to be able to perform governmental functions. She adds the state, "gained a lot of concessions from the tribes by making that compact."
Details kept secret
As part of the deal, the tribes are supposed to spend all the money on transportation. But when the Problem Solvers tried to check, we uncovered a disturbing fact: The state agreed to keep almost all the information about how that money is spent - secret.
"They have a duty to show us what they did with that money, and they won't," Hamilton said.
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