When is a public vote not a public vote? When it doesn’t go Tim Eyman’s way, that’s when

Yes­ter­day, KING 5 aired a sto­ry on the pro­vi­sion of I‑1125 that attempts to sab­o­tage Sound Tran­sit’s East Link project. The pro­vi­sion in ques­tion, Sec­tion 3, would  for­bid WSDOT from trans­fer­ring part of the Homer M. Hadley Memo­r­i­al Bridge to the agency for light rail, which obvi­ous­ly would pre­vent light rail from reach­ing Belle­vue and Red­mond (NPI’s home­town) at all.

We first began alert­ing the tra­di­tion­al press to the exis­tence of this pro­vi­sion back in May, short­ly after Tim Eyman announced the I‑1125 sig­na­ture dri­ve.

This week, Dan­ny West­neat wrote a col­umn on the top­ic (Tim Eyman’s secret war on light rail) and now KING 5 has done a sto­ry, which fea­tures some amus­ing lines from Tim Eyman. The sto­ry opens with a shot of a Sound Tran­sit Express bus in Belle­vue and a short voiceover by reporter Chris Daniels: “Down­town Belle­vue is slat­ed to see the so-called East Link a decade from now…”

… and then imme­di­ate­ly cuts to Tim Eyman say­ing, “I nev­er vot­ed for it.”

Maybe not, but a lot of oth­er peo­ple did. The vote on Sound Tran­sit 2 in 2008 was­n’t even close. 57.08% of vot­ers in urban King, Pierce, and Sno­homish coun­ties vot­ed in favor of Sound Tran­sit Propo­si­tion 1 in 2008, with only 42.92% opposed.

Chris Daniels brought this up with Eyman, but Eyman con­ve­nient­ly found a way to dis­miss the vote as irrelevant:

When asked, “Haven’t vot­ers already approved light rail over I‑90?” he replied, “A sub­set of [vot­ers] have had a vote [on an light rail over I‑90], not every­one in the state.”

What Eyman real­ly meant to say was that, in his eyes, the vote did­n’t count because it did­n’t go his way. That would have been the hon­est answer — but of course, Tim Eyman isn’t known for his honesty.

Eyman will hap­pi­ly cite the out­come of a pub­lic vote that he agrees with, regard­less of whether it hap­pened at the local lev­el, region­al lev­el, or state lev­el. But he does­n’t talk about the pub­lic votes that he dis­agrees with. At least not with­out being prompt­ed. And then he comes up with an excuse to dis­qual­i­fy the results.

East Link is a region­al trans­porta­tion project. Only peo­ple who live with­in Sound Tran­sit’s tax­ing dis­trict are pay­ing for East Link. No state mon­ey is being used to design or con­struct the project. And actu­al­ly, because of a Sound Tran­sit pol­i­cy called sub­area equi­ty, only tax­pay­ers who live in neigh­bor­hoods that East Link will serve are pay­ing for it. That means Tim Eyman isn’t actu­al­ly pay­ing for East Link, even though he is a Sound Tran­sit taxpayer.

Giv­en that East Link is a region­al trans­porta­tion project being paid for with region­al mon­ey, why should peo­ple who live in Aberdeen, Colville, Pas­co, Yaki­ma, or Wal­la Wal­la have a say on it? Why should they get to decide what kind of trans­porta­tion sys­tem Puget Sound has? It’s not their deci­sion. They jus­ti­fi­ably would­n’t be too hap­py if vot­ers in Puget Sound made deci­sions for them.

We have a long tra­di­tion of home rule in Wash­ing­ton State. It’s why we have so many local gov­ern­ments. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Tim Eyman has a tra­di­tion of spon­sor­ing ini­tia­tives that total­ly and care­less­ly stomp all over home rule.

It’s cer­tain­ly true that East Link will run over a por­tion of what is present­ly Inter­state 90, but Sound Tran­sit is com­pen­sat­ing the state for its use of the bridge.

Inter­state 90, by the way, is a fed­er­al high­way in addi­tion to being a state high­way. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed the lion’s share of the mon­ey to build it, on the con­di­tion that the cor­ri­dor be able to sup­port high-capac­i­ty tran­sit in the future. A mem­o­ran­dum signed by the cities of Mer­cer Island, Seat­tle, King Coun­ty, and the State of Wash­ing­ton made an explic­it promise that this would happen:

Sec­tion 1. (b) The facil­i­ty shall also con­tain pro­vi­sion for two lanes designed for and per­ma­nent­ly com­mit­ted to tran­sit use. The east­ern and west­ern ter­mi­ni for these lanes shall be designed to facil­i­tate unin­ter­rupt­ed tran­sit and car­pool access to down­town Seat­tle and to down­town Belle­vue in accor­dance with para­graph 3 here­in­be­low. The design shall be such as to accom­mo­date the oper­a­tion of the two tran­sit lanes ill either a reversible or in a two-way direc­tion­al mode.

The mem­o­ran­dum lat­er goes on to say:

Sec­tion 2. The I‑90 facil­i­ty shall be designed and con­struct­ed so that con­ver­sion of all or part of the tran­sit road­way to fixed guide­way is possible.

“Fixed guide­way” basi­cal­ly means train tracks. Here’s a more tech­ni­cal def­i­n­i­tion from the Fed­er­al Tran­sit Admin­is­tra­tion: “A ‘fixed guide­way’ refers to any tran­sit ser­vice that uses exclu­sive or con­trolled rights-of-way or rails, entire­ly or in part.”

This mem­o­ran­dum I’ve just excerpt­ed from was signed in 1976… when Tim Eyman was only ten years old. It has tak­en a very long time, but our region is final­ly ready to move for­ward and con­vert the I‑90 tran­sit lanes to a fixed guide­way… more specif­i­cal­ly, train tracks for East Link.

But Tim Eyman and his wealthy bene­fac­tor Kem­per Free­man Jr. don’t want the terms of this agree­ment to be enforced. They don’t want the vot­er-approved East Link project built. Why? Because they are ide­o­log­i­cal­ly opposed to light rail. They are diehard road war­riors who wrong­ly believe that traf­fic con­ges­tion would just go away if only we built big­ger and wider highways.

To them, the auto­mo­bile means freedom.

What they don’t get is that design­ing com­mu­ni­ties around cars instead of peo­ple actu­al­ly inhibits free­dom. True free­dom of mobil­i­ty means the abil­i­ty to choose a mode of trans­porta­tion. Peo­ple who don’t want to dri­ve, for what­ev­er rea­son, should­n’t be forced to. They should have options. If our region lacks a good tran­sit sys­tem, that makes it hard to get around with­out a car.

Link light rail is all about pro­vid­ing a reli­able com­mute for peo­ple through major trans­porta­tion cor­ri­dors that are present­ly high­ly con­gest­ed today.

Vot­ers first approved build­ing a region­al light rail sys­tem in 1996 with Sound Move. In 2002, Tim Eyman tried to over­ride the will of the vot­ers with Ini­tia­tive 776, which passed nar­row­ly statewide, but failed in Sound Tran­sit’s tax­ing dis­trict. (I‑776 was actu­al­ly the first Eyman ini­tia­tive I was involved in fight­ing; Per­ma­nent Defense was cre­at­ed to oppose I‑776. PD will cel­e­brate its tenth anniver­sary this February.)

I‑776 tried to kill Cen­tral Link, the first Link light rail line, by elim­i­nat­ing one of Sound Tran­sit’s sources of rev­enue — a motor vehi­cle excise tax (MVET). How­ev­er, when Eyman wrote the ini­tia­tive, he either did­n’t under­stand or did­n’t care that the tax he was try­ing to repeal had already been pledged to pay off bonds. Sound Tran­sit argued that the tax need­ed to remain in place so it could ful­fill its promis­es to bond­hold­ers. The Supreme Court agreed, and the tax con­tin­ues to be collected.

With I‑1125, Eyman is basi­cal­ly try­ing to do what he did with I‑776 nine years ago: Try to kill a Sound Tran­sit light rail line with a statewide vote.

Eyman prides him­self on being unde­terred when he los­es. But he unrea­son­ably demands that his oppo­nents give up and regard an issue as set­tled when he wins. Pret­ty good dou­ble stan­dard, huh?

To Tim Eyman, who I know even­tu­al­ly will read this post, we say: Sor­ry, Tim. You may be very deter­mined to con­tin­ue fight­ing to par­a­lyze pub­lic ser­vices and wreck gov­ern­ment in this state, but we are even more deter­mined to stop you. Wash­ing­ton can­not afford your destruc­tive, cyn­i­cal, ill-con­ceived initiatives.

Read­ers, please join us in vot­ing NO in I‑1125 if you haven’t already. Keep Sound Tran­sit’s East Link on track, and keep our roads safe.

Let’s defeat Tim Eyman… again!