NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

City of Redmond adopts resolution opposing Tim Eyman’s Initiative 1125

As reg­u­lar read­ers may remem­ber, two weeks ago, NPI urged the City of Red­mond — which we proud­ly call home — to join us in tak­ing a stand against Tim Eyman’s lat­est scheme to par­a­lyze our com­mu­ni­ties and wreck gov­ern­ment, Ini­tia­tive 1125.

(I‑1125 made the bal­lot back in July thanks to a boat­load of mon­ey from Eyman’s No. 2 all-time wealthy bene­fac­tor, Kem­per Free­man. Wash­ing­to­ni­ans will begin vot­ing on the mea­sure in just a few weeks, along with two oth­er initiatives).

Tonight, Red­mond May­or John Mar­chione and the Red­mond City Coun­cil act­ed on our request, vot­ing to adopt a res­o­lu­tion that declares the City to be opposed to Eyman’s Ini­tia­tive 1125, which would endan­ger vital trans­porta­tion projects impor­tant to Red­mond’s econ­o­my and qual­i­ty of life.

The vote to take a posi­tion against I‑1125 was five to two.

The two coun­cilmem­bers who dis­sent­ed, David Car­son and Hank Myers, stressed dur­ing the debate over the res­o­lu­tion that they do not sup­port I‑1125, but were nev­er­the­less uncom­fort­able with the idea of putting the City on record as oppos­ing a statewide ini­tia­tive, even though there was and is prece­dent for doing so.

The oth­er coun­cilmem­bers, how­ev­er, all spoke enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly in favor of tak­ing a stand, not­ing that I‑1125 threat­ens Red­mond’s future.

Red­mond has actu­al­ly been a leader in oppos­ing harm­ful Tim Eyman ini­tia­tives; the City has con­sis­tent­ly gone on record against Eyman’s mea­sures, begin­ning with I‑695 in 1999. Red­mond also opposed I‑722 in 2000, I‑745 in 2000, I‑747 in 2001, I‑776 in 2002, I‑985 in 2008, and I‑1033 in 2009.

We at NPI are very proud of our home­town for repeat­ed­ly lead­ing the way in call­ing for the rejec­tion of coun­ter­pro­duc­tive, thought­less Tim Eyman initiatives.

Tonight, the City of Red­mond has done so again, and for that, we thank May­or John Mar­chione and the five coun­cilmem­bers who vot­ed to adopt Res­o­lu­tion No. 11–199 (Kim Allen, Richard Cole, Pat Vache, Hank Marge­son, and John Stilin).

The best part of the debate tonight was City Coun­cilmem­ber John Stil­in’s speech for the res­o­lu­tion (and against I‑1125). Here’s what Stilin said:

CITY COUNCILMEMBER JOHN STILIN: Well, I’ve strug­gled with the issue that Mr. Car­son strug­gles with — telling vot­ers what to do, or telling them how to vote. But I think we’ve made it pret­ty clear in this res­o­lu­tion how bad this is for Red­mond. And I’m not sure my prin­ci­ples are as impor­tant as hav­ing [State Route] 520 done the way it should be done… I whole­heart­ed­ly sup­port this.

I’ll even take a jab at the peo­ple that put it out there: Why don’t you tell us how to fund it instead of telling us not how to do some­thing? I’m real­ly impressed with peo­ple that can always tell you what you can’t do, but nev­er have solu­tions for how to do it. I think we know how to get it done — we’ve put a plan for­ward, and I’m not let­ting any­thing stop us from get­ting that road done. So I’ll be vot­ing to sup­port this.

We con­cur with Coun­cilmem­ber Stil­in’s sentiments.

For more than a decade, Tim Eyman has made it his busi­ness to make mess­es that our elect­ed lead­ers have to clean up. Eyman claims it’s not his job to fig­ure out how to fund vital pub­lic ser­vices that the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton need and demand.

But while he may not be an elect­ed law­mak­er, he has turned him­self into a full-time cit­i­zen law­mak­er who actu­al­ly makes more mon­ey than our state legislators.

Since he has cho­sen law­mak­ing as his pro­fes­sion, it’s time we start­ed hold­ing him to the same stan­dards we hold our oth­er law­mak­ers to. When he tries to dodge or evade ques­tions about the con­se­quences of his sin­is­ter schemes, he should be held to account. When he tries to fall back on his recy­cled talk­ing points and pre­re­hearsed sound bites, he should be inter­rupt­ed and asked, “So, what ser­vices should be cut? By how much? What is your solution?”

Since Per­ma­nent Defense was found­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2002 (PD will be cel­e­brat­ing its tenth anniver­sary in just four months!), Eyman has gone from being able to get a destruc­tive, slick­ly-pack­aged ini­tia­tive past vot­ers every year to only being able to get a destruc­tive ini­tia­tive past vot­ers every few years. It’s not good when one of his schemes pass­es, but at least it’s not hap­pen­ing as often — and we con­sid­er that to be a huge improve­ment over the pre­vi­ous situation.

We are con­fi­dent that the peo­ple of this state will reject I‑1125 if they under­stand its true ram­i­fi­ca­tions. Here is the text of the res­o­lu­tion adopt­ed tonight by the City of Red­mond, which spells out some of those ramifications:

CITY OF REDMOND RESOLUTION NO. 11–199
A RESOLUTION OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF REDMOND, WASHINGTON, OPPOSING INITIATIVE 1125, CONCERNING TRANSPORTATION.

WHEREAS, Ini­tia­tive Mea­sure 1125 (1–1125) places restric­tions on the use of tolling rev­enues, requires that all toll rates be flat rates, and estab­lish­es new require­ments on who sets tolling rates; and

WHEREAS, 1–1125 would restrict the use of rev­enue gen­er­at­ed from tolling on Inter­state 90 and would pro­hib­it this rev­enue from being used for replace­ment of the SR-520 bridge, mak­ing it hard­er for the State to fund this crit­i­cal safe­ty project; and

WHEREAS, 1–1125 would also pro­hib­it the use of vari­able tolling or “con­ges­tion pric­ing” and would require one flat rate for tolled facil­i­ties, which means all motorists trav­el­ing across the SR-520 bridge pay the same toll regard­less of the time of day of trav­el; and

WHEREAS, one flat toll rate will gen­er­ate less toll rev­enue than vari­able tolling to help fund the SR-520 bridge replace­ment project; and

WHEREAS, the State of Wash­ing­ton and local agen­cies have received fed­er­al grant fund­ing con­di­tioned on imple­ment­ing vari­able tolling on the SR-520 bridge as a con­ges­tion man­age­ment tool, and the State Office of Finan­cial Man­age­ment has fore­cast­ed that up to $128 mil­lion in fed­er­al fund­ing would be at jeop­ardy if vari­able tolling is not imple­ment­ed; and

WHEREAS, 1–1125 requires that toll rates be set by the State Leg­is­la­ture rather than by an inde­pen­dent com­mis­sion; and

WHEREAS, the State Trea­sur­er has said that hav­ing the Leg­is­la­ture set toll rates instead of an inde­pen­dent com­mis­sion would sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the cost of financ­ing the SR-520 bridge replace­ment project, adding $300 mil­lion or more to the cost of the project; and

WHEREAS, 1–1125 would jeop­ar­dize the State’s abil­i­ty to fund the SR-520 bridge replace­ment project and oth­er crit­i­cal trans­porta­tion projects on Inter­state 405, State Route 167 and the State Route 99 Alas­ka Way Viaduct replace­ment project that rely on toll rev­enue for fund­ing; and

WHEREAS, SR-520 is the trans­porta­tion link for ser­vices, busi­ness­es, employ­ers and employ­ees and the move­ment of goods and peo­ple to and from the City of Red­mond, and replace­ment of the SR-520 bridge and cor­ri­dor improve­ments are crit­i­cal for the safe oper­a­tions of SR-520 and mobil­i­ty on this cor­ri­dor; and

WHEREAS, the City of Red­mond sup­ports tolling of the SR-520 and 1–90 cor­ri­dors to help pay for the SR-520 bridge replace­ment project and to man­age con­ges­tion on these high­ways; and

WHEREAS, the City of Red­mond has opposed past efforts to restrict the use of tolling and toll pro­ceeds due to their neg­a­tive impacts on fund­ing high­way capac­i­ty improve­ments, mobil­i­ty and the eco­nom­ic health of the city and region; and

WHEREAS, the dam­ag­ing cost and eco­nom­ic impli­ca­tions from 1–1125 have led the Microsoft Cor­po­ra­tion, The Boe­ing Com­pa­ny, and an array of busi­ness, labor, and envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions to oppose 1–1125; and

WHEREAS, 1–1125 is not in the best inter­est of Red­mond due to the increased costs that would result for replace­ment of the SR-520 bridge and the threat to mobil­i­ty on SR-520 and the eco­nom­ic health of the City.

NOW, THEREFORE, THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF REDMOND, WASHINGTON, HEREBY RESOLVES AS FOLLOWS:

Sec­tion 1.The Red­mond City Coun­cil takes an offi­cial posi­tion oppos­ing 1–1125 con­cern­ing transportation.

Sec­tion 2. The Red­mond City Coun­cil encour­ages vot­ers to oppose 1–1125 con­cern­ing trans­porta­tion, due to the increased costs that would result for replace­ment of the SR-520 bridge and oth­er major trans­porta­tion projects and the threat to mobil­i­ty on SR-520 and oth­er high­ways and the eco­nom­ic health of the City and region.

ADOPTED by the Red­mond City Coun­cil thisday of Octo­ber 4th, 2011.

NPI and the broad, diverse coali­tion that has formed to fight Tim Eyman’s I‑1125 strong­ly urge you to keep vital trans­porta­tion projects like SR 520 and East Link on track by vot­ing NO on I‑1125 this autumn.

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2 Comments

  1. Well done, Sir. We appre­ci­ate your efforts to sti­fle the “eyman”. Your pre­sen­ta­tion to the coun­cil could­n’t have been more fruit­ful, unless there was a depor­ta­tion order for Mr. Eyman.

    # by stephen s :: October 5th, 2011 at 12:27 AM
  2. Go Red­mond!

    # by Kimberly Dodge :: October 5th, 2011 at 11:57 AM

One Ping

  1. […] City of Red­mond adopts res­o­lu­tion oppos­ing Tim Eyman’s Ini­tia­tive 1125 […]

    Ping from Morning Rundown for October 5th, 2011 :: October 5th, 2011 at 10:54 AM
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