Today is Per­ma­nent Defense’s eleventh anniver­sary, and giv­en that Per­ma­nent Defense was ini­tial­ly cre­at­ed to oppose I‑776 (Tim Eyman’s scheme to block Cen­tral Link light rail from being built), it seems like the per­fect time for us to announce that Joni Earl, the CEO of Sound Tran­sit, will be one of the speak­ers at NPI’s 2013 Spring Fundrais­ing Gala on Fri­day, April 5th, 2013.

Joni is one of our favorite peo­ple and we’re absolute­ly delight­ed that she’s going to be part of our speak­ing pro­gram this year.

Buy a tick­et to our 2013 Spring Fundrais­ing Gala right now by fol­low­ing this link.

Since tak­ing over as CEO more than a decade ago, Joni has trans­formed Sound Tran­sit into one of the best-run pub­lic agen­cies in the coun­try. ST was in pret­ty lousy shape when Joni took the helm, but nowa­days, it deliv­ers projects on time and under bud­get, and it has regained the trust and con­fi­dence of the public.

Were it not for Joni’s lead­er­ship, Link light rail would nev­er have become a real­i­ty for our region. Joni’s efforts to get Sound Tran­sit ship­shape made it pos­si­ble for Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray and Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Norm Dicks to go to bat for Link on Capi­tol Hill. They per­suad­ed the Repub­li­can in charge of the House appro­pri­a­tions sub­com­mit­tee on trans­porta­tion to drop his objec­tions to the project, ensur­ing Sound Tran­sit could get the fed­er­al fund­ing it need­ed to con­struct Cen­tral Link.

That break­through, by the way, came just a few weeks after NPI’s found­ing. That makes 2013 the tenth anniver­sary year for both NPI and Cen­tral Link. (NPI came into being on the Web on August 22nd, 2003; the Cen­tral Link ground­break­ing took place Novem­ber 8th, 2003 in Seat­tle’s SoDo neighborhood).

The day of the ground­break­ing, then-King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber (now Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Chair) Dwight Pelz pre­dict­ed to The Seat­tle Times that Novem­ber 8th would be remem­bered “as a moment of cel­e­bra­tion as we begin to bring rail — [and] not just this one route.”

“We’re con­fi­dent it will be a coun­ty­wide sys­tem with­in twen­ty years. Com­mu­ni­ties across the coun­ty are going to be clam­or­ing for rail,” he added.

Dwight was spot-on.

But he was only spot-on because Joni Earl and her team worked hard to expand Link north, south, and east… even as Cen­tral Link was being built.

Their first tri­umph came when the Port of Seat­tle agreed to help Sound Tran­sit bring light rail all the way into SeaT­ac. Con­struc­tion on Air­port Link began before con­struc­tion on Cen­tral Link was fin­ished, and went so smooth­ly that the Air­port Link exten­sion opened the same year that Cen­tral Link did.

Joni’s team then secured fund­ing from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to con­struct Uni­ver­si­ty Link, bring­ing light rail north to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Washington.

And in 2008, just months after the fail­ure of the Roads & Tran­sit propo­si­tion in 2007, Joni and her team came up with a new pack­age for the Sound Tran­sit board to put before vot­ers. This pack­age, dubbed “Sound Tran­sit 2”, was enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly approved by vot­ers in 2008, mak­ing it pos­si­ble for Sound Tran­sit to begin plan­ning East Link, North Link, and the first seg­ments of South Link.

In just three years, Link will expand both north and south as Uni­ver­si­ty Link and Angle Lake Link open to the pub­lic. Mean­while, work will con­tin­ue to bring light rail to the East­side and to Lyn­nwood — projects that are tar­get­ed for com­ple­tion in 2023. If all goes well, Dwight’s pre­dic­tion will be ful­filled, and we will indeed have a light rail sys­tem con­nect­ing many of the most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed com­mu­ni­ties in King Coun­ty just twen­ty years after the Cen­tral Link groundbreaking.

We are proud of the role we have played in sup­port­ing the devel­op­ment and con­struc­tion of light rail in our region. That’s why the theme of our gala this year is Build­ing Tran­sit for All. We hope you’ll join us on April 5th to hear Joni tell the remark­able sto­ry of Sound Tran­sit’s turn­around and give us an update on the projects that Sound Tran­sit has in the pipeline — includ­ing Uni­ver­si­ty Link.

Tick­ets to our Spring Fundrais­ing Gala are just $60 for indi­vid­u­als and $90 for house­holds. Although this is a fundrais­ing event, we do our best to make it afford­able for activists. We know you get asked for mon­ey a lot. We do, too!

Spon­sor­ships are also avail­able at sev­er­al lev­els.

In the weeks to come, we’ll be shar­ing more details about our 2013 gala, includ­ing the names of our oth­er speak­ers. We hope you’ll help us make our 2013 Spring Fundrais­ing Gala a suc­cess by buy­ing your tick­et and com­mit­ting to attend.

See you on April 5th!