So David, no tough issues there. And to think that ferries did not even rise to the surface.

Isn't it a little premature to assume whether or not Sound Transit should be back until someone figures out what Sound Transit might be back with?

The legislators seem to be motivated by a pure self protection politics as opposed to whether say, getting light rail to Northgate sooner rather than later, might make a whole lot of sense.

That sort of politics could well backfire.

Improving public transportation in the greater Seattle area is the voters' number one issue, and they clearly want another shot at expanding the light rail system. Survey data show that.

If the Legislature steps on Sound Transit and in any way thwarts a revote this year, they risk a wave of public indifference at the polls in November. That's a risk that should give the Dems pause, especially the Governor.

Cooler heads should allow Sound Transit to work with their public and put together a new light rail proposal for the November ballot.

Which part of No New Roads don't they get?

Rebuild - sure.

Repair - definitely.

Replace - ok.

Add interchanges - no prob.

Add HOV lanes - sure.

Build new highways - not with my tax dollars!

They should pass a law doing away with subarea equity, so ST can build the Husky Line.

Seattle and King County have been corrupting transportation policy the last 15 years.
What do they want.
Gentrification.
Why do they want it.
Revenue.
They don't care about saving a whale,salmon or frog.
They want to cop out on infrastructure using sophist social engineering to save that money for seiu wages.
Hey Will try driving a stick shift truck for a living. take a look around your house how do you think that stuff got there,by twinkling your nose or clicking you heels.
It got there by truck.
what is sad is that people like Will may actually think they are being green,and saving a whale salmon or frog when they help Seattle and King County achieve a grand boulevard of 35 mph hour traffic planned for revenue.
No more of that with my tax dollar.

Maybe someone at the State level should try to stop Ron Sims from putting 2,000 new homes in the middle of Maple Valley with no improvements in transit or other transporation infrastructure? Or has Martin Durkan Jr. paid them all off as well?

"What do they want.
Gentrification.
Why do they want it.
Revenue."

Oh boy, here we go again with the lazy urban legends, and axe-grinders pursuing their own private agendas.

Nicely done, publicbulldog

The Port Commission raises taxes with no public vote, gets slammed by the state auditor for wasting a hundred million dollars, and is now under federal investigation....yet Olympia is worried about Sound Transit, which recently passed yet ANOTHER audit with flying colors - and all ST wants to do is let THE VOTERS decide if their taxes should be raised?

To make things worse, the State Legislature is seriously considering turning Sound Transit into a Port-like agency by "reforming" their governance structure. If you want an idea of how "accountable" this model is, see what happened to reformer Port Commissioner Alec Fisken. The same forces which wasted our tax dollars bought Fisken's opponent a seat on the forever - "down ballot" commission.

Not to be outdone, similar Republican forces want to create a Sound Transit board they can buy-off, too, knowing it's their last chance to thwart the public's strong preference for light rail.

If you keep losing the game, just change the rules.

If any governance model needs to be changed, it's the hapless State Legislature. Then, move on to fix the Port - by making it an appointed federated board, made up of professionals and local electeds, whose campaigns cannot be purchased by the usual monied Republican interests who all know well and good that one in ten voters can name a single "accountable" Port Commissioner.

reggie: your passion is palpable. However, there isn't the corporate backing now to finance a new run by st at the voters this Nov. Plus, st wants additional, less-regressive financing tools for the next ballot measure. You saw what happened with the big sales tax increase proposal. Ouch! Word is, the lege isn't going to give them the new tools until the '09 session.

That's pretty good, Reggie. State and local governments - completely and totally run, managed and funded by the Democrats, their supporters and policies - and you manage to slur Republicans with your criticisms. That's quite the trick.

Good Grief.

Can't we wait and see if Sound Transit can come up with something that makes sense before knee jerking No to transportation improvements. Sheesh.

Transit ballot measures don't need "corporate" support. They need votes. And from the looks of things, turnout in the 2008 general election is going to be enormous.

From redflag: "Transit ballot measures don't need "corporate" support."

Hate to burst your bubble about politics kiddo, but just as an army moves on its stomach, a ballot proposition calling for new taxes only moves forward if it has strong financial backing. Do you know how much money was behind the pro-Prop. 1 campaign? $4.1 million. That's not chicken feed, charlie. None of the players are willing to cough up anything like that after their ROI was so lousy in '07 when they placed the ducats on ST to win.

Some better financing tools in a couple of years, popular service on the airport Link, and st'll be ready to take another crack at it. Them's just reality . . . .

Which part of no more light rail did they not get?

Oversold in the first place - check...

Overbudget all over the place - check...

Overbullying by the ST board - check...

Overhyped without a ticket ever sold - check...

Overpimped by the politically clueless - check...

Over the side with more plans for it - check...

Over all, people drive, they want roads - CHECK...

The Piper

Gosh Pale Rider, how silly of little old me to think that a ballot measure may not need "corporate" support to win. But I can't be expected to be nearly as smart as you anyway.

How much "corporate" support did last year's successful "bridge the gap" and "transit now" proposals have? In an off year?

Just wondering.

Sound Transit didn't waste the $4.1 million on Prop. 1, the people they hired to run the campaign did.

Hey scott st. claire:

What do you and your eastside neighbors think about sound transit's new round of plans that will violate the subarea budgeting terms approved by voters in 1996? Those were important to you and your neighbors when you voted to approve ST's system plan that year.

Done any thinking or writing about that, Piper?

Now ST plans on hauling billions out of the East King subarea for light rail tunneling to the UW athletic facilities in Seattle. That sitting well with you suburbanites? I don't have my finger on the pulse of what's happening on the Eastside.

Thanks in advance for your response.

Clibborn said that the state should not prevent Sound Transit from trying again now. But, she said, “I think cooler heads will prevail” and she doubts there will be another attempt before 2010.

Sorry, but 2010 is too long to wait for a vote on a project that takes so long to build. We want that vote this year. Anything else and I'm voting against it.

Clibborn is a lightweight hand picked by Chopp because he knew she wouldn't defy him on transportation. ST should plan to move forward in 2008 with more light rail. The results in Iowa and NH indicate a progressive tide sweeping the country. What better time to improve the environment by getting cars off the roads, create thousands of family wage jobs, and facilitate more density and affordable housing by building miles and miles of light rail? If Chopp, the governor, or the rest of the democrats in the legislature stand in the way of this, not only are they weak cowards only paying attention to their own re-elections, they're stupid.

Here’s the thing about Scott St. Clair – he’s a gomer. Gomer is a term of art, referring to someone who posts about local transportation issues and embraces completely twisted and incorrect beliefs in certain areas:

- They have no idea what the local law says that the voters approved in 1996, they are incapable of locating a complete copy of Resolution 75/Sound Move, and they refuse to discuss any aspect of the 2004 “Sane Transit vs. Sound Transit” Supreme Court opinion.

- They couldn’t care less if Sound Transit deceives the public, the Supreme Court and/or the bond market about its extant taxing rights or its future spending plans.

- In a gomer’s mind, it would be just excellent if Sound Transit confiscated $3 billion more in local taxes from the East King County subarea, and then spent all that excess in Seattle.

- They have no idea whether or not Sound Transit filed an SEC “official statement” in connection with the sale of $450 million of its bonds a couple of weeks after Prop. 1 was defeated, and even if they did know about such an “official statement” they wouldn’t discuss anything it might say.

- They would not think of trying to argue that sufficient financing capacity exists in the North King subarea to cover all the projected University Link costs.

- They think it is just dandy that the state auditor's office now is declining to audit ST’s compliance with the subarea budgeting mandates the voters approved in 1996.

Anything Scott St. Clair "PIPER" posts regarding transportation passes through the gomer filter first.

Geez, they don't want ST to resubmit a proposal?

Must be an election coming up next year.

Brent Hayward...

Huh?

You have me confused with someone else since I consider ST to be of the devil, a literal spawn of Satan!

From the get-go, it was fubared. Deliberately under-budgeted and sold on knowingly false cost - and I assume ridership - assumptions. I remember one then-ST board member - who shall remain nameless even as he knows who he is - as much as admitting that the numbers proffered were cooked. That's the way these things work, was the rationale, so live with it; your betters know what's best for you.

If you think I'm some pimp for ST, then you ain't been payin' attention!

And may I assume that you are blogger BH on the P-I's blog?

And Rotgut...

I'm no fan of tunnels either. And I take for granted Eastside taxpayers will get screwed in any deal involving Seattle since Seattle collectively thinks its don't stink.

That some float an idea of tunneling under either UW or UW-adjacent high rent district property makes sense only if you remember rats and other varmints often tunnel under whatever in order to hide from the exterminator.

Sounds to me like the above ground types in that neighborhood who've been eager condemnation beavers for cross town projects that disrupt the lives of others are squishy when their turn at bat comes round.

Could be they'll just have to discover that emminent domain, like rain, does indeed fall on the rich and the un-rich alike.

To Eastsiders, ST and light rail are like how the ancient Chinese regarded the Forbidden City: The mountains are very high, and the emporer is a long way away.

To paraphrase a Jessica Lange line from the movie Rob Roy, "We will think of Sound Transit dead, and then we will think of it no more."

On a serious vein, before any credible progress can be made on region-wide transportation issues, there needs to be governance reform on a serious scale. Right now all we have is a Balkanized gaggle of petty fiefdoms all competing for attention and $$$ with little, if any, regard for what real people with real lives who do real work in the real world really do, and that's drive.

I know some in the legislature agree with me on this because...well, just because. Whether enough will eventually agree remains to be seen.

I'd like to see transporation planning and projects removed from run-of-the-mill political logrolling ("Trade you my highway for your courthouse") and placed under some sort of administration or agency devoted exclusively to seeing to it that people can move from Point A to Point B in the swiftest and safest manner possible consistent with ways that THEY want rather than what some social enginner wants.

What we have now gave us ugly and pork-ridden Prop 1, which the voters had the good sense to deep six by a wide margin.

While governance reform is necessary for all area-citizens, personally I favor more roads and then busses as a transit option. I have zero interest in light rail as a general proposition with it improving only to zero plus next to zero until ST gets serious experience under its belt running the thing.

I mean, how do we know people will actually care?

Hope this meets your needs...

The Piper

If I may follow up, Piper -

There’s a phrase you used that rings a little tinny to my ear: “deliberately under budgeted.”

The law the voters approved in 1996 did have some construction period cost estimates in it (for light rail, express buses, and heavy rail) that turned out to be too low.

But those were not budgets, in any sense of the word.

On the other hand, there were some budgets that the voters did approve in Resolution 75/Sound Move. Those were the subarea budgets where the voters made available certain amounts of revenue from several sources for ST to use during the construction period. They are set out in Appendix A of Sound Move. Those were not “under budgeted” - they are fixed amounts that ST must work within.

As I am sure you know, Resolution 75 says that ST’s board only could do three things if the expected costs of some project would exceed the budgeted financing capacity the voters made available for a particular subarea: scale back the project, ask for more spending authority, or not build the particular project and spend the available revenues on an alternative HCT mode.

You agree that nothing in Resolution 75/Sound Move authorizes ST to exceed the subarea construction period budgets the voters approved in 1996, right?

Two more things:

"And I take for granted Eastside taxpayers will get screwed in any deal involving Seattle since Seattle collectively thinks its don't stink."

Do you really think ST could violate terms of Sound Move/Res. 75 with impunity if "Eastside taxpayers" were harmed thereby? What provisions of Res. 75/Sound Move are you referring to?

And this: "To paraphrase a Jessica Lange line from the movie Rob Roy, "We will think of Sound Transit dead, and then we will think of it no more.""

You do understand that once ST has spent the construction period budget amounts it still can collect some taxes to operate the "system plan," right? ST never will die completely - don't mislead yourself about that.

Piper couldn't be more right. This whole "light rail" thing is a joke, bad idea, way over budget etc. Will in Seattle, it may work for you, and about 1% of the rest of the region, but for most, we need more road capacity and more express buses etc., we don't like live in the city man. Just who is going to benefit when they open light rail from the airport to downtown in 2009, does everybody work in downtown Seattle? Do they all live at the airport? Our region is to diverse and spread out, we need better solutions and light rail is not value added. And carpool lanes that are empty at 7:30 at night, come on, open them up when traffic is light.

Dispassionate Observer...

Here's how this all works out for me...

"Underbudgeted" - X amount of light rail at Y cost was more or less sold to the voters, but those who were doing the selling knew, or had to know, in their heart of hearts that there was no way in Heaven or on earth that X could be had for Y.

There was a time when people started noticing that instead of raising prices on certain consumer products, manufacturers simply shrunk the size of the product. Hershey Bars got smaller, three-pound cans of coffee became two-something pounds, and a half-gallon of ice cream started adding noticeably less calories and fat than before.

Price increases are quickly noted, while tinkering with quanity takes some time to get on the radar screen.

So it goes with Sound Transit and light rail. The X for Y we were promised all of a sudden become X minus several miles.

Why no massive outcry or tar-and-feather uprising? Because nobody in town was surprised; that's just the way government works.

Books can be cooked, revenue guestimates can be alterd because of the ever popular "changed circumstances," and the usual chicanery is always to be expected.

Remember...this is the land of WPPSS.

No doubt we'll be paying ST taxes well past the Second Coming. However, that doesn't mean we have to suffer lightly ST any longer than necessary. If transportation governance reform succeeds (I'll cross my fingers but won't hold my breath - We're dealing with a lot of the same players here), then ST could get put under a region-wide umbrella authority with an elected board responsible only for transportation issues.

No more King County Council Member Julia Patterson screaming at ST hearing witnesses or seeing her stomp out of a room as she throws a hissy fit.

I've advocated for some time an authority with responsibiity for all non-federal activities that have as their purpose in life the movement of people from Point A to Point B with a jurisdiction from Thurston County through most of Skagit County.

Of course, the devil is in the details, and some will say it's just another layer of government. But if instead of being additional, it serves to replace what will then be eliminated, then maybe we can come out net, net, net no worse off than now.

As for RTA Resolution No. 75, expensive lawyers can always find some way to skin the subarea equity cat. How? Beats me, but I've no doubt it can be done.

The Piper

Following are two examples of St. Clair misrepresenting terms of Resolution 75/Sound Move (the local law approved by voters in 1996). Are these intentional misrepresentations? Nobody should care. However, it is clear this guy posts inaccurate tripe regarding Sound Transit’s authority, and he does so in ways ST applauds.

1. “‘Underbudgeted’ - X amount of light rail at Y cost was more or less sold to the voters”

There was no “X amount” of light rail promised by the RTA, or “sold to the voters.” The only thing actually promised was that the RTA would not exceed the Sound Move Appendix A spending limits during the construction period in the five subareas. It would have been perfectly legal under Res. 75/Sound Move for Sound Transit to have completed the Phase I construction period without building any light rail. Note how St. Clair fails to cite to any authority.

2. “The X for Y we were promised all of a sudden become X minus several miles.”

See above. Sound Transit did not promise “X” miles of light rail. The “Y” part is accurate though. There are upper limits on the amounts of several types of revenue sources ST may spend during the construction period. For example, the voters in 1996 only authorized ST to use up to an aggregate of $1.98 billion (1995$) of local taxes (and $1.052 billion in bond sale revenue) during the construction period. Again, that’s in Appendix A of Sound Move.

The tone St. Clair uses in his posts is interesting. He’s got the beaten-dog rap down. He’s prostrate, at peace embracing the role of the victim. He’s resigned to Sound Transit taking advantage of him and all his neighbors. Expensive lawyers *somehow* are going to ensure all the taxpayers on the Eastside have their rights under Sound Move’s subarea budgeting terms violated. Books are cooked, there’s the “usual chicanery,” ST is the “spawn of Satan,” it is what all governments do . . . . this nonsense goes on and on. No details are given to substantiate whatever it is St. Clair is rambling on about. It is just a stream of words conveying a vague sense of foreboding. This guy relentlessly projects that he’s an utterly helpless - and hapless - victim of a local government.

He says exactly what Sound Transit wants to hear from “the opposition.” St. Clair is a total gomer.