NPI's Cascadia Advocate

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

Tuesday, October 11th, 2011

Microsoft invests $600,000 into NO on 1125

Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling, the coali­tion that is fight­ing Tim Eyman’s I‑1125, has just received a huge finan­cial boost from one of Wash­ing­ton’s largest employ­ers: Microsoft (which, like NPI, is head­quar­tered in Red­mond). The com­pa­ny had pre­vi­ous­ly donat­ed $100,000 to the cause, but last Fri­day, it wrote anoth­er check for six times that amount, bring­ing its aggre­gate total to $700,000.

Oth­er major con­trib­u­tors to Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling to date include:

  • $40,000: Pem­co
  • $30,000: Wright Run­stad & Associates
  • $25,000: HDR Inc., Puget Sound Ener­gy, Par­sons Brinck­er­hoff, the Seat­tle Mariners, the Wash­ing­ton State Build­ing & Con­struc­tions Trade Coun­cil, Saltchuk Resources, and Weyerhaueser
  • $20,000: Pre­mera Blue Cross, Wash­ing­ton Asphalt Pavers Association
  • $16,500: Amal­ga­mat­ed Tran­sit Union (includ­ing Locals #587 and #1765)
  • $16,000: Pacif­ic North­west Region­al Coun­cil of Carpenters
  • $15,000: Vul­can, Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil, Aero­space Machin­ists Dis­trict #751, Kiewit Infra­struc­ture West

In total, Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling has raised $1.2 mil­lion, and it will like­ly end Octo­ber hav­ing raised clos­er to $2 mil­lion, if not more.

Microsoft obvi­ous­ly accounts for more than half of the amount raised, though the per­cent­age of its con­tri­bu­tions to Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling are out­weighed by the per­cent­age of Kem­per Free­man, Jr.‘s con­tri­bu­tions to Tim Eyman’s coffers.

Written by Andrew Villeneuve :: 8:55 AM

Categories: Elections, Policy Topics, Public Planning

Tags: , ,

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One Comment

  1. Thanks for the info. It is iron­ic that Microsoft would oppose I‑1125, giv­en that many of their East­side employ­ees live out­side the area served by Sound Tran­sit, see link to their ser­vice area at link below.

    For exam­ple, many at Microsoft work in Maple Val­ley and Cov­ing­ton, and adja­cent areas out­side the urban growth bound­ary in east King Coun­ty. Oth­ers work at Fall City and numer­ous oth­er delight­ful towns in the Sno­qualmie Val­ley includ­ing the Town of Snoqualmie.

    Not only do these areas not have light rail, they do not also have bus rapid transit. 

    Per­haps John Niles can offer some sug­ges­tions on bus rapid tran­sit from these out­lin­ing com­mu­ni­ties, and how to widen dan­ger­ous two lane rur­al roads into Red­mond and Bellevue. 

    http://www.soundtransit.org/documents/pdf/riding/map_lg.pdf

    Thank you
    Tom Lane

    # by Tom Lane :: October 12th, 2011 at 10:43 PM

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