Pow! Bam! Inslee delivers a one-two punch of executive power

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OLYMPIA — In the final round of bill signing Tuesday, Gov. Jay Inslee unleashed a one-two combo of executive power the likes of which state lawmakers had never seen.

First, he vetoed a sentence repeated in six successive sections of the transportation budget, each time poisoning a different bucket of money for transit.

Then, he ordered $175 million be shifted from five highway projects to removing and replacing culverts impeding the passage of salmon to spawning grounds, and fish to the ocean.

Though separate and unrelated actions, each appears to set a precedent. Inslee’s top advisers Tuesday could not cite another example of a governor vetoing a single sentence in a budget bill or asserting executive authority to redirect such a large sum of transportation dollars absent involvement of lawmakers.

The veto involved grant programs supporting bus service, vanpool programs and other multi-modal projects. Under Inslee, laws have been passed requiring providers of public transit services to stop using gasoline-powered vehicles and switch to ones fueled by electricity or biofuel or other alternatives.

In the bill, lawmakers wrote that “Fuel type may not be a factor in the grant selection process.” This would allow grants to go to entities using gas-fueled vehicles in defiance of the alternative fuels law. The budget, with the language, passed nearly unanimously in both chambers.

Inslee could have vetoed each section — a typical response for problematic language — but that would have wiped out $200 million of transit funding. He wasn’t going to be stymied either.

“In this very rare and unusual circumstance I have no choice but to veto a single sentence in several subsections to prevent a constitutional violation and to prevent a forced violation of state law,” he wrote in his veto message.

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/pow-bam-inslee-delivers-a-one-two-punch-of-executive-power/