Link Transit Board Faction Fails to get Sales Tax Repeal Measure On November Ballot, Again

After bidding outgoing CEO Richard DeRock farewell, members debated walking away from $40 million over 16 years tied to a 2019 ballot measure passed by Chelan and Douglas County voters

Link Transit Board Member Mark Kulaas (center) expresses frustration with the “relitigation” of a 2019 sales tax measure that increased Link’s budget by millions. Board members (from left to right) include Chairman Marc Straub, Kevin Overbay, Jim Fletcher, Mark Kulaas, Randy Agnew and Kyle Steinburg.

After more than an hour of sometimes-heated discussion, the Link Transit board of directors voted Tuesday to postpone for nine months any discussion of putting a measure on the ballot of any upcoming elections that would allow voters to repeal a sales tax approved in 2019.

It’s the second time in four months that the topic of repealing the tax has come up ahead of the Aug. 1 deadline to put a measure on the ballot for the Nov. 2023 general election. The current sales tax rate is 0.5%, it was 0.4% until 2020 when the first 1/10 of the approved increase went into effect. The second one-tenth percent is scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2024, for a total of 6/10 of a percent collecte…