Private citizen Rick Hughes: San Juan County cannot operate passenger ferry system without federal and state assistance

County Council member Justin Paulsen: Desire in County to “make decisions with our constituents”

Saturday, February 22, 2025
by Jeff Noedel

TVW VIDEOS ARE BELOW

Support for State Rep. Greg Nance’s HB 1923, the “Mosquito Fleet Act” was almost universal at the bill’s public hearing Wednesday. Of nearly three dozen witnesses who testified, only only spoke against the bill. A West Seattle citizen felt more ferries on the waterways would harm the whales.

Few legislators on the committee posed questions to the witnesses, except State Rep. Julia G. Reed, a Democrat from the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle.

Whenever a witness who had ties to a county or municipality spoke, Reed probed for assurances that localities are ready and willing to take-on local control and local financial support of new routes created under the Mosquito Fleet Act.

One of the local leaders quizzed by Reed was San Juan County Council Rep. Justin Paulsen. Here is an exchange between Rep. Reed and Paulsen.

Reed: Is the county in a financial position to really support that operations and maintenance? Long term, or would you be looking to kind of work with the state to cover those costs? What’s the what’s your readiness level to take on the operations and maintenance?

Paulsen: What this entire conversation has spurred within our county is a desire to make those decisions within our with our constituents. There is a very large appetite, to tackle this problem within the county. This bill provides the funds that allow us to even have that conversation with our community. And we are definitely willing to bring that conversation forward. We have we were lucky enough to receive funds in the previous governor’s emergency budget that we are currently implementing, RFP’s are out to service providers to provide, passenger-only service. And this gives us an opportunity to really network with our neighboring communities and Skagit and Whatcom County, Island County, and really explore those connections, with them. So, I would say the appetite is very much there within San Juan County to support efforts like this. And it would mean creating a new district to tackle that task.

Reed: Great. Do you think, based on your conversation so far, that the appetite is equally there with your partner counties, with Skagit and Whatcom and counties, where you’d have to have docks on the other side, too?  So do you feel like I can certainly understand the the enthusiasm in San Juan County? And I’m excited about it. But I guess my concern is that is having not had a chance to hear from many county officials about their readiness to take this on.  Do you think that that it’s easy, as is equally shared by your neighbor counties

Paulsen: I would say that our neighboring counties have, fantastic infrastructure. And we currently have some private service being operated for profit between our neighboring counties. And this offers a chance to expand that, and increase medical and other access for their citizens and ours.

Later in the two-hour-long hearing, Rick Hughes sat at the witness table. Hughes is a former San Juan County Council member who ran unsuccessfully to return to the Council last year. Paulsen — also a candidate — won. Hughes is now a part-time registered lobbyist in the legislature, lobbying for several local causes including state funding to complete the Pea Patch Community Campus in Eastsound. San Juan County government is not a lobbying client of his. He testified on the bill as a private citizen.

Here are Hughes’ remarks to the House Transportation Committee.

“Honorable committee members, my name is Rick Hughes.

I’m a former San Juan County Council member, and I’m the owner-operator of Ray’s Pharmacy, the only independent pharmacy on Orcas Island.

And, representative (Julia Reed, D-36, Queen Anne), I’d like to answer your questions.  Since I’m no longer elected and I can say kind of what I want to do without getting in too much trouble.

I think small independent counties cannot afford to run and operate a sustainable, independent ferry system without the assistance of the federal and state government. Nor do I think it’s their responsibility.

I think we were promised a level of service in San Juan County. We lost at least 127 interisland ferry (sailings) by July (of 2024). That being said, I think it’s an opportunity for us to make that decision ourselves. I had a lot of comments of things I wanted to offer suggestions to this bill, which I’m not going to get to thank you because I have an 8:55 ferry to catch.

But, I do think there’s ways to do this. We should include lodging tax in this. We need to open-up county authority. We need to get CRAB (County Road Administration Board) to release local, county gas tax money. And let us use that for islands consisting entirely of counties or counties consisting of islands. There’s a lot of ways we can do this together, as long as there’s a promise from the state that the level of service that was promised in 1954, or whatever it was, that the  maintenance of that service continues.

I fought for 15 years to keep level of service in San Juan County, and I had been denied almost every year on this. And look where we’re at now. So I think there’s a way we can do it, give us the tools to operate and function and work together and let us figure it out. There was a great Puget Sound regional partnership putting together a passenger only survey that I was part of that… out of all the counties San Juan County was considered, and even it wasn’t even our regional district.

So there’s a viable way to make this work, especially in San Juan County. It’s just going to be different than it is down-Sound, because we don’t have some of the same considerations. I think we’d start with an inter-island ferry first. Transit to Bellingham. We already have the infrastructure in San Juan County to take up to a 100 person boat, and we could partner with Port of Bellingham or Port (of Anacortes) to do that.

So I apologize for overstepping and I have so many other things to say. But, bottom line is make counties not have to become districts, just let counties be counties and be part of public works. Give us more flexibility to figure out how to make this work independently, and then come and work together on the funding again, as long as there’s a promise not for continuing level of service decline from Washington State Ferries.  Thank you.”