Two questions now percolating through the political process illustrate our vulnerability in South Kitsap and Port Orchard to changes in transportation funding that increase local residents’ costs.

The Kitsap peninsula has a limited number of access points for travel outside the county for work or other reasons.

One of those access points is via State Route 16 across the Tacoma Narrows toll bridge.

Tolls are supposed to be set at an amount sufficient to pay the construction debt and to maintain and operate the bridge until the debt is paid off.

This sounds easy enough to do, except that not everyone agrees on how much is “sufficient.”

If revenue from tolls falls short of costs in any year, the state is obligated to cover the shortfall using other state revenues.

To some who oppose increasing tolls to provide a bigger cushion between projected toll revenues and anticipated costs, the state’s guarantee to cover a shortfall makes a bigger cushion unnecessary.

But from the point of view of people in the rest of the state, this guarantee is the reason why toll revenues have to be high enough to be fairly certain that other state revenues won’t be needed.

If they are needed, somebody else’s transportation funding has to be cut in order to pay the shortfall in bridge toll revenues.

Unless those who oppose a toll increase can show that the increase isn’t necessary to avoid any reasonable chance of taking state funds from other areas, the increase now in the works will occur.

If we miss the point by arguing that the state’s obligation cancels any need for higher tolls, we may come across as either obtuse or seeking special treatment.

This problem of seeming to want to be treated differently can also arise when criteria used to apportion state funding for maintenance of state highways indicate that we might be getting special treatment.

There is such a situation now under consideration involving SR-166 from Gorst through Port Orchard.

Port Orchard and the Southworth ferry dock are served by SR-16 and SR 160 (Sedgwick Road from SR-16 to the ferry dock).

The question is whether, and to what extent, SR-166 — from Gorst through downtown Port Orchard and along a part of Mile Hill Drive — should be a state highway.

As pointed out in the public hearing this week on Senate Bill 6510 in the Committee on Transportation, SR-166 arguably doesn’t fit the criteria used to identify roadways that should be maintained by the state.

The question has arisen because a state law enacted in 1993 described SR 166 as running “to the eastern Port Orchard city limits,” and the city limits have changed since then.

A “no man’s land” exists along a part of Mile Hill Drive because it is clearly not a county road, and the city and state disagree about its status as a city street or state highway.

Until the issue is resolved, this stretch of road is within the city limits as extended by annexations since 1993, but isn’t being maintained by either the city or the state.

Naturally, state officials charged with the responsibility of maintaining state highways construe the law as referring to the eastern city limits as they were in 1993, not as they are now.

Otherwise, the city could annex property along the roadway and shift the road maintenance cost from the county to the state.

SB 6510 would resolve the matter by extending SR-166 all the way to the Southworth ferry dock, which is already served by SR-160.

Proposing this solution carries with it a risk that close examination of the circumstances may persuade the legislature that some or all of SR 166 as it now exists shouldn’t be a state highway.

The cost could shift from all state taxpayers to local residents, if we seem to be asking for something that similarly situated communities in other parts of the state don’t get.

Bob Meadows is a Port Orchard resident.

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