Pierce County’s paid $3B in taxes for transit. The return has lagged behind
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- The Pierce County subarea has contributed $3.3 billion in taxes to Sound Transit 3 (ST3).
- Direct spending in the county has lagged behind Seattle and Snohomish counties.
- Officials say Pierce County’s time will come with light-rail extension construction.
Pierce County has generated more than $3 billion in taxes for the Sound Transit 3 (ST3) Plan nearly a decade after the 2016 passage of the ambitious, yet significantly underfunded, ballot measure to expand the regional transit system.
The tax revenues haven’t been directly invested into the county as quickly as tax proceeds from King and Snohomish counties have been spent in those respective jurisdictions, according to a News Tribune analysis of annual Sound Transit reports.
In response to the contrast and asked whether taxpayers were receiving their fair share, Sound Transit and elected officials said the current financial picture is not unexpected and added that Pierce County’s time is coming.
Tacoma City Council member Kristina Walker, who sits on the Sound Transit Board, said in a late-April interview that the so-called Pierce County subarea will significantly outspend others when a planned light-rail extension to Tacoma begins construction.
“It ebbs and flows,” Walker said, regarding the spending in five subareas that compose Sound Transit’s transportation district.
Project supporters received good news Thursday about the Tacoma Dome Link Extension, which is planned in 2035 to connect Tacoma with Federal Way and therefore Seattle. The project, estimated to cost $5 billion to $6 billion, was not among those proposed for delay amid Sound Transit’s $34 billion gap to fully fund ST3 over the next two decades.
‘Our time is coming’
Sound Transit collected almost $3.3 billion in tax revenues from Pierce County taxpayers between 2017 and 2025, according to spokesperson David Jackson. That figure breaks down to $2.4 billion in sales tax, $667 million in motor vehicle excise tax, $194 million in property tax and $2 million in rental car tax.
It’s roughly equivalent to each resident in the Pierce County subarea paying an average of $450 annually during that period.
To compare the finances of Sound Transit’s five subareas, The News Tribune reviewed the agency’s subarea equity reports from 2017 to 2024. The report for 2025 is not yet available.
The “Pierce County” subarea comprises 14 cities, including Tacoma, and represents more than 807,000 residents or about 85% of the county’s population, according to the 2024 report. The other subareas are “North King County,” “East King County” and “South King County” — which collectively represent more than 2 million people or approximately 89% of King County’s residents — and “Snohomish County,” comprising roughly 508,000 people or 58% of that county’s population.
Between 2017 and 2024, the Pierce County subarea contributed $2.8 billion in tax revenues to Sound Transit. The agency spent $1.6 billion directly in the subarea, reports show.
Put differently, Pierce County accounted for 18% of Sound Transit’s tax proceeds, but it directly received only 8% of the overall used funding, according to The News Tribune’s analysis.
Jackson said that because large capital investments occur in different parts of the regional transit system at different times, subareas can move between being in a surplus or deficit. Including other, smaller revenue sources such as fares and grants, Pierce County’s $2 billion surplus was larger than any other subarea’s fund balance as of 2024.
“In an Enterprise Initiative approach where the Tacoma Dome Link Extension is prioritized and moves forward through construction, this balance would likely be exhausted in a few years,” Jackson said in an email. “Pierce would likely see some years in the near future where the subarea report showed a negative ending balance.”
Pierce County Executive Ryan Mello, who’s a vice chair on the Sound Transit Board, framed the financial situation in terms of borrowing and loaning between subareas at any given moment.
“So while we have been building a lot of things in central Puget Sound, in King County, I think the math you’ve begun to understand for yourself, we’ve been largely a loaner for the past while,” Mello said in an interview late last month. “Our time is coming where we are a borrower.”
Mello said Sound Transit overpromised what it could do in 2016 and every subarea won’t be able to do everything from the plan, but he also believed Pierce County was less at risk of falling short “because our subarea is best positioned financially to deliver.”
Sound Transit spent $814 million on capital and $554 million on operations and maintenance within the Pierce County subarea between 2017 and 2024, according to The News Tribune’s analysis.
The largest operations and maintenance costs were $284 million for express buses, $203 million for the Sounder commuter train and $45 million for Tacoma’s streetcar T Line, the analysis shows.
Between 2021 and 2024, Sound Transit paid capital expenses of $179 million for the T Line, $149 million for the Sounder and $104 million for light rail, according to the annual reports. Capital expenses couldn’t be similarly analyzed prior to 2021 because those reports categorized capital costs differently.
Other expenses were for debt service payments, changes in reserve and systemwide cost allocation.
Subarea ‘fair share’
Under the legislation that created Sound Transit in 1993, and within ST3 and two prior ballot measures, it’s required that subareas are treated equitably. Subarea equity essentially boils down to this: A subarea should receive transportation benefits in proportion to the local tax revenues it generates. Subareas may fund projects or services outside themselves as long as they are substantially benefited.
“For example, the Snohomish County subarea is responsible for a portion of Sounder commuter trains and track improvements in King County because Snohomish County residents directly benefit from the north corridor service into Seattle and back,” the 2024 subarea equity report notes.
There are also shared, systemwide elements that all subareas pay into, including the ORCA smart card, transit-related technology research and development, and planning and environmental analysis for future capital programs, according to the report. Mello emphasized that everybody benefits from the regional system’s growth as a whole.
Sound Transit doesn’t assess compliance with subarea equity until the end of the system expansion program, Jackson said. ST3’s financial plan runs through 2052.
Local leaders want assurances far sooner.
Last month, Tacoma City Council member Sandesh Sadalge released a statement on “the critical importance of centering equity in regional transit decisions.” In response to the Sound Transit Board contemplating a scenario that delayed the light-rail extension to Tacoma, Sadalge wrote that those with the least resources needed to be connected to the regional transportation system.
His letter referenced Tacoma’s Eastside, his minority-majority and working-class district, where he said 63% of residents must travel outside the city for their jobs. The Tacoma Dome Link Extension was not a convenience, he wrote, but an economic necessity.
In an interview last month, Sadalge was asked to respond to The News Tribune’s analysis showing that the Pierce County subarea’s current spending lagged behind its neighbors.
“It puts into numbers what we feel viscerally, but it also goes to the point that I made in the statement that I released: We have a tendency — and we know this — when government faces scarcity, it’s the haves that get it and the have-nots that don’t.”
When ST3 was approved in 2016 by 54% of voters collectively in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties, more than 55% of the Pierce County electorate rejected it. Sadalge said he was not surprised people didn’t believe in it, pointing to an underlying issue of distrust in government and voter apathy.
Mello and Walker both said they routinely talk to ST3 skeptics and critics. Walker added that she also hears daily from people who want transit to grow faster.
“We have to deliver on what we said we are going to deliver,” Walker said.
Mello remained optimistic but acknowledged the uncertainty of building megaprojects in general, including with right-of-way acquisition, engineering and federal partnerships.
“We are going to get our due,” he said. “It will be equitable.”
