Rodney Tom and Curtis King’s transportation “listening tour” doesn’t have a Seattle stop

The Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus today unveiled a list of dates and loca­tions for the trans­porta­tion “lis­ten­ing tour” they’ve been promis­ing to hold since the end of the con­tentious leg­isla­tive ses­sion back at the begin­ning of the sum­mer. The “tour” will con­sist of sev­en pub­lic meet­ings — one each in Belle­vue, Van­cou­ver, Taco­ma, Spokane, Yaki­ma, Wenatchee, and Everett:

• Sep­tem­ber 17th – Seattle/Bellevue (North­west Region): Steven­son Ele­men­tary School, 14220 NE 8th St., Belle­vue, WA 98007
• Sep­tem­ber 18th – Everett (North­west Region): Sno­homish Coun­ty, Robert Drewel Build­ing, 3000 Rock­e­feller Ave., 1st floor, Everett, WA 98201
• Sep­tem­ber 23rd – Wenatchee (North Cen­tral Region): Chelan Coun­ty PUD Audi­to­ri­um, 327 N Wenatchee Ave, Wenatchee, WA 98801
• Sep­tem­ber 24th – Yaki­ma (South Cen­tral Region): Yaki­ma Area Arbore­tum, Gar­den View Rm., 1401 Arbore­tum Dr., Yaki­ma, WA 98901
• Octo­ber 2nd – Spokane (East­ern Region): Greater Spokane Inc., 801 W. River­side, Spokane, WA 99201
• Octo­ber 7th – Van­cou­ver (South­west Region): Van­cou­ver Com­mu­ni­ty Library, Colum­bia Room, 901 C St., Van­cou­ver, WA 98660
• Octo­ber 9th – Taco­ma (Olympic Region): Ever­green Taco­ma Cam­pus, Lyceum Hall, 1210 6th Ave., Taco­ma, WA 98405

No stop is planned for Seat­tle, the state’s largest city, although bizarrely, the Belle­vue stop is list­ed on the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans’ web­site as “Seattle/Bellevue”, as you can see above. This is mis­lead­ing, because Steven­son Ele­men­tary School is just down the road from Cross­roads in the east­ern part of Bellevue.

The school is clos­er to Red­mond or Kirk­land than Seat­tle, yet it’s being adver­tised as the “Seattle/Bellevue” meet­ing loca­tion. Huh? “King Coun­ty” would have been accu­rate. But it seems as though the Repub­li­cans are try­ing to cov­er for the fact that they did­n’t both­er to sched­ule a meet­ing in Seat­tle proper.

Nice try, guys, but that won’t do.

The Emer­ald City, Wash­ing­ton’s largest munic­i­pal­i­ty, is big­ger than Spokane, Taco­ma, and Van­cou­ver com­bined… so why does­n’t it have its own stop?

Maybe it’s because, as we saw dur­ing the ses­sion, Repub­li­cans seem to have noth­ing but con­tempt for Seat­tle. From their anti-Emer­ald City rhetoric to their spon­sor­ship of bills aimed at over­turn­ing the city’s pro-work­er ordi­nances to their fail­ure to pro­vide King Coun­ty with the author­i­ty to raise rev­enue for Metro, they’ve done their best to stiff Wash­ing­ton’s largest city.

The Repub­li­cans claim that the meet­ing loca­tions cor­re­spond to the Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion’s six regions. While that may be the case, they could have done a bet­ter job of pick­ing meet­ing places (or sched­uled more meetings).

Notice that three of the meet­ing loca­tions are in fair­ly close prox­im­i­ty to each oth­er on the main­land. This is where the major­i­ty of the state’s pop­u­la­tion lives, but because no oth­er meet­ings are sched­uled for the north­west­ern part of the state, it means any Wash­ing­to­ni­ans who live on the Olympic Penin­su­la, Kit­sap Penin­su­la, or any of the state’s major islands — Vashon, Bain­bridge, Whid­bey, the San Juans — will need to pay a toll or fer­ry fare to par­tic­i­pate in the “lis­ten­ing tour”.

(Either that, or do a lot of dri­ving to cross a bridge that isn’t tolled).

Trans­porta­tion is a major issue for Wash­ing­to­ni­ans who live in fer­ry-depen­dent com­mu­ni­ties, which leads us to won­der: Why was­n’t a meet­ing sched­uled in, say, Bre­mer­ton, Port Townsend, Fri­day Har­bor, or Anacortes?

And what about peo­ple in south­west or south­east­ern Wash­ing­ton who don’t live near Van­cou­ver or Yaki­ma? There’s no meet­ing being held at a loca­tion with­in rea­son­able dri­ving dis­tance for many Wash­ing­to­ni­ans. Was any thought giv­en to sched­ul­ing meet­ings in Belling­ham, Aberdeen, Pull­man, or the Tri-Cities?

We also won­der whether this “lis­ten­ing tour” will live up to its name. The NPI team are polit­i­cal town hall vet­er­ans, and we know from expe­ri­ence that politi­cians tend to dom­i­nate town hall-style pub­lic meet­ings and do most of the talking.

It would be some­thing if Repub­li­cans actu­al­ly did open up the floor for pub­lic com­ment from the get-go, and put the focus of the meet­ings on the tes­ti­mo­ny, as opposed espous­ing to their own views.