Railroad funding illustrates problems

MOSES LAKE - The Port of Moses Lake voted to ask the Legislature to extend and transfer money allocated to the port to a different area of the same railroad revitalization project for which it was designated. 

The Grant County Republican Party was asked to comment on this project. While the Party has no official stance, there are guiding principles found in our platforms that should direct decisions made by Republican elected officials at all levels.

First and foremost is the question of authority. While we believe the Federal Commerce Clause has been tortured mercilessly, it is the binding legal authority over railroad business and subsequently this regulatory authority has been granted to the Surface Transportation Board. Simply by the nature of the beast, we must address this project at a federal level.

Unfortunately, as we've seen in the last several years of this project, the wheels of funding are grinding slowly, as they were even before the current financial crisis in the nation. While our state legislature has granted their share of the requested burden, Congress has not, which has caused our local project to stall and prospects of completing it to diminish. Now the funds from the state legislature are due to expire, and the only remaining option is to ask them to transfer the funds to a separate piece of the project that has a better chance of being completed.

The principle on which the Republican Party would stand in this situation is smaller government, closer to home. In this case, if funding could have been found here within the county, this project would most likely have been completed by now, and service to our new industries would be active. Because the funding was requested from state and federal taxpayer money, it will be required to progress at the speed dictated by those entities. The second part of this equation is that the further away the government involved, the less they are attached to our local situation. County or city government would be more interested in the success of this project, whereas state government sees this as one more project in just one of their 39 counties, and the federal government has even less concern for it.

Other side issues include the fair use of eminent domain, support of business and creation of jobs in the private sector, the amount of taxes paid to local districts such as the port, requirements by unaccountable government agencies that affect use of private and public lands, transportation issues, and even the Growth Management Act. Ultimately, though, these all come back to the fact that local governments - where voters decide who represents them to make these decisions - know us better and are more responsive to our local needs.

Infrastructure is vital to our free-market system, and this project would fall within that category. The question that remains is how it will be funded - slowly through the government structure or more quickly with local and regional support? It's up to us here in Grant County - the voters, the businesses and local government.