Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed a transportation budget that elevates the freeway car-pool lanes through Tacoma to the same status as five other so-called “mega projects” across the state, a status that gives the $1.5 billion Tacoma project a better chance of actually getting built.

The bill signing took place in downtown Tacoma, and Mayor Bill Baarsma noted the significance of the locale.

“What a contrast of where we began and where we finished,” he said.

He was referring to the difference between the original transportation budget the governor proposed last December and the one she signed into law Wednesday afternoon. Her first budget “delayed to death” many key highway projects in Pierce County. The final one not only speeds up $130 million of car-pool lane construction on Interstate 5, but also lays out a 16-year funding plan to nearly finish the project.

For many other state projects, funding will run out by 2015.

Baarsma credited Pierce County Executive Pat McCarthy with mobilizing the community behind the county’s legislative delegation to get most of what its lawmakers were promised when they voted in favor of gas tax increases in 2003 and 2005. A coalition of 105 business, labor and other groups and community leaders rallied to get funding for local projects restored in the budget passed by the Legislature.

The 2009-11 transportation budget, which includes money for the Department of Transportation, the State Patrol and the Department of Licensing, is $7.5 billion – the largest in state history.

Gregoire said combined with the federal stimulus money the state got in January, there will be $5 billion in construction projects through June 2011. That will create 49,000 jobs, she said.

She noted that some of those jobs will come to Concrete Technology, the Tacoma company that will be building about $100 million worth of pontoons for the replacement for the Highway 520 bridge across Lake Washington.

Gregoire went to Grays Harbor later Wednesday to sign a bill to move ahead with that $4.65 billion project because an even bigger share of work on the pontoons will be done in Aberdeen and Hoquiam, communities desperately in need of jobs too.

“This budget couldn’t have come at a better time,” Gregoire said. “Not only will it greatly improve our transportation system, the projects I’m signing off on will ensure regular employment for tens of thousands of Washingtonians.”

On Tuesday, she signed into law a bill that authorizes a two-mile deep-bore tunnel under downtown Seattle to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, another of the mega-projects whose overall cost is pegged at $4.24 billion.

Besides the viaduct, the 520 bridge and Tacoma car-pool lanes, only three other projects are scheduled to receive enough money to bring them to near completion. They are the widening of Interstate 90 over Snoqualmie Pass, improvements to parts of Interstate 405 between Southcenter and Lynnwood, and the north-south freeway in Spokane.

The budget assumes the state will start borrowing money for 30 years instead of 25 years. Over the 16-year plan, the budget made an additional $450 million available for projects.

Joseph Turner: 253-597-8436 joe.turner@thenewstribune.com blogs.thenewstribune.com/politics