Flashback: The Seattle Times was for funding Metro bus service before they were against it

Read­ers, wel­come to anoth­er install­ment in our Flash­back series, where we enlist the help of past Seat­tle Times edi­to­r­i­al boards to debunk short­sight­ed and poor­ly rea­soned edi­to­ri­als pub­lished on the Times’ op-ed page in the present day.

Today, 2000, 2006 and 2008 Seat­tle Times are going to be help­ing us defend Metro against 2014 Seat­tle Times, which is urg­ing vot­ers to oppose King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1 in a myopic edi­to­r­i­al which ran in print yes­ter­day.

First, some back­ground: King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1 is a mea­sure on the April 22nd spe­cial elec­tion bal­lot that would address the chron­ic trans­porta­tion fund­ing prob­lems cre­at­ed by the imple­men­ta­tion of Tim Eyman’s Ini­tia­tives 695 and 776, which were on the bal­lot in 1999 and 2002, respectively.

I‑695 attempt­ed to do two things, in vio­la­tion of the sin­gle-sub­ject rule for ini­tia­tives: Repeal the statewide motor vehi­cle excise tax (MVET) and require future increas­es in rev­enue be sub­ject to a pub­lic vote. I‑695 was over­turned by the courts, but then-Gov­er­nor Gary Locke, afraid to stand up to Tim Eyman, asked the Leg­is­la­ture to rein­state the repeal of the MVET, and it com­plied, blow­ing a huge hole in state and local trans­porta­tion budgets.

In 2002, Eyman fol­lowed up with I‑776, which sought to repeal local motor vehi­cle excise tax­es col­lect­ed in just four of Wash­ing­ton’s thir­ty-nine coun­ties (King, Sno­homish, Pierce, and Dou­glas). I‑776 passed nar­row­ly. It, too, was chal­lenged in court, but it was par­tial­ly upheld on appeal.

Eyman, an anti-rail lib­er­tar­i­an, had hoped that I‑776 would force the can­cel­la­tion of Sound Tran­sit’s Link light rail project by elim­i­nat­ing Sound Tran­sit’s MVET, along with the MVETs col­lect­ed by the four coun­ties named above. How­ev­er, the courts ruled that since the agency had already pledged the MVET’s rev­enue to pay off bonds, it could not be repealed. Sound Tran­sit has con­tin­ued to col­lect its MVET, but King Coun­ty’s MVET — a cru­cial source of fund­ing for coun­ty roads — went away.

With the loss of statewide and local MVET fund­ing, King Coun­ty became very depen­dent on the sales tax to fund trans­porta­tion improve­ments and operations.

When the Great Reces­sion hit, Wash­ing­ton fam­i­lies sharply cur­tailed their spend­ing, which in turn caused sales tax rev­enue to fall dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Metro’s finan­cial sit­u­a­tion became pre­car­i­ous, and King Coun­ty appealed to the Leg­is­la­ture for help.

The Leg­is­la­ture autho­rized King Coun­ty lead­ers to raise vehi­cle fees to save Metro bus ser­vice, but only tem­porar­i­ly, and only if a super­ma­jor­i­ty of the coun­cil vot­ed aye. The votes were mus­tered and the fee was enact­ed, but it is now due to expire, and Metro is once again in a very pre­car­i­ous situation.

King Coun­ty lead­ers, well aware that seri­ous cuts to bus ser­vice had only been tem­porar­i­ly avert­ed and mind­ful of the need to do some­thing about the dete­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tion of many of the coun­ty’s roads, soon began lob­by­ing the the Leg­is­la­ture to pass a com­pre­hen­sive trans­porta­tion pack­age that would allow the coun­ty to once again col­lect an MVET. But ses­sion after ses­sion, they got nowhere.

The House did pass a trans­porta­tion pack­age in 2013, but the hope­less­ly and bit­ter­ly divid­ed Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus refused to even put a pro­pos­al on the floor for a vote, pro­duc­ing only hot air and excus­es in the wake of fruit­less nego­ti­a­tions, to the great frus­tra­tion of the House and Gov­er­nor Inslee.

With time run­ning out to save Metro and fix dete­ri­o­rat­ing coun­ty roads, the King Coun­ty Coun­cil opt­ed to use the only tool left in its tool­box: Form a trans­porta­tion ben­e­fit dis­trict and ask the peo­ple for the author­i­ty to act.

That is how we end­ed up with Propo­si­tion 1, which asks vot­ers to replace an expir­ing vehi­cle fee and raise the sales tax one tenth of one percent.

The Seat­tle Times, sad­ly, is against Propo­si­tion 1. As men­tioned, in an edi­to­r­i­al that ran in the print edi­tion yes­ter­day, Frank Blethen and his edi­to­r­i­al board equate the steep cuts that have been pro­posed to bus ser­vice to scare tac­tics, and urge a no vote to “send King Coun­ty gov­ern­ment a message.”

It’s easy to for­get that once upon a time, Blethen’s Times was in favor of rais­ing rev­enue to pro­tect exist­ing ser­vice and make pos­si­ble new service.

The 1996 Seat­tle Times backed the Sound Move pro­pos­al to build a region­al light rail sys­tem. The 1999 Seat­tle Times opposed Ini­tia­tive 695. The 2000 Seat­tle Times sup­port­ed a pro­pos­al to back­fill the hole blown by I‑695 with a sales tax increase. The 2002 Seat­tle Times opposed I‑776, and the 2006 Seat­tle Times sup­port­ed the Tran­sit Now pro­pos­al to expand RapidRide.

But the days when the Seat­tle Times could be con­sid­ered pro-tran­sit are over. The Times now not only oppos­es fund­ing for tran­sit expan­sion, as it did in 2008 when it blast­ed Sound Tran­sit Propo­si­tion 1, but also fund­ing to pre­serve exist­ing ser­vice. Yes­ter­day’s edi­to­r­i­al does­n’t explic­it­ly acknowl­edge the change in posi­tion, but alludes to it by repeat­ed­ly find­ing fault with King Coun­ty lead­ers for try­ing to save Metro and invest in the coun­ty’s belea­guered road ser­vices division.

Blethen’s Times pro­fess­es to still care about Metro, but refus­es to sup­port a mea­sure that would save over six­ty of its routes from elim­i­na­tion, and dozens more from severe cut­backs in ser­vice. The Times argues:

Say­ing no to Propo­si­tion 1 is not a mes­sage that tran­sit does not mat­ter. It does. The region, par­tic­u­lar­ly job-dense down­town Seat­tle, needs reli­able bus ser­vice. Nor should a no vote be read in Olympia as a sign the state Leg­is­la­ture does not need to pass a trans­porta­tion pack­age that includes less regres­sive tran­sit tax options. It does.

Vote no on Propo­si­tion 1, and send King Coun­ty gov­ern­ment a mes­sage that Metro has more work to do on right­ing its cost struc­ture before ask­ing vot­ers for more revenue.

What uni­verse is the author of this unsigned edi­to­r­i­al and his boss liv­ing in?

Metro has already cut costs. It has already raised fares (four times since the reces­sion hit). It has already deferred cap­i­tal projects to pro­tect exist­ing ser­vice. The agency has been back­fill­ing for years. It is now out of Band-Aids.

KCDOT (the King Coun­ty Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion), mean­while, is even more piti­ful shape. Bad­ly need­ed repairs and main­te­nance to coun­ty roads are being deferred because KCDOT has so lit­tle fund­ing to work with.

If the Times real­ly cared about reli­able bus ser­vice and well-main­tained roads, it would whole­heart­ed­ly sup­port Propo­si­tion 1, and wel­come King Coun­ty lead­ers’ efforts to act when the Leg­is­la­ture would not. Instead, the Times is urg­ing a no vote and fool­ish­ly hold­ing out hope for a statewide trans­porta­tion package.

The Seat­tle Times of yes­ter­year would have mocked and debunked the argu­ments that today’s Seat­tle Times is mak­ing. Don’t take our word for it. Here’s the 2000 Seat­tle Times on the impor­tance of sav­ing Metro bus ser­vice:

King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Ron Sims wants the Coun­ty Coun­cil to put a sales-tax increase on the Novem­ber bal­lot to keep bus­es rolling and fix a vari­ety of region­al trans­porta­tion snarls.

The coun­cil on Mon­day should meet him two-thirds of the way.

All of the coun­cil’s atten­tion, and polit­i­cal ener­gy, must be on fore­stalling deep cuts in the Metro bus sys­tem that are com­ing cour­tesy of Ini­tia­tive 695.

Sims wants three-tenths of a cent, but the coun­cil should stick with two-tenths of a cent. That increase would raise $80 mil­lion a year, which, com­bined with admin­is­tra­tive cuts and a 25-cent fare increase, should keep the Metro bus sys­tem whole.

Empha­sis is mine.

That edi­to­r­i­al, which went on to dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty of some mon­ey going to Sound Tran­sit to help with light rail con­struc­tion costs, con­clud­ed by unequiv­o­cal­ly declar­ing that King Coun­ty Metro bus ser­vice was worth protecting:

Slow down. Take first things first. Sound Tran­sit may crave the extra mon­ey, but it has the decen­cy to say the first pri­or­i­ty needs to be pro­tect­ing the buses.

The com­ing cuts in bus ser­vice are real. This is a region that depends on bus­es for com­muters and as basic trans­porta­tion for thou­sands of households.

Don’t play games with the bus­es; shore up their financ­ing. That is the best choice on Monday.

Again, empha­sis is mine.

Don’t play games with the bus­es; shore up their financ­ing. That’s what the Seat­tle Times told coun­ty lead­ers to do in Sep­tem­ber 2000. Their words!

And the fol­low­ing month, they offered the same advice to vot­ers:

If motorists think traf­fic is nasty now, imag­ine it with anoth­er round of Metro tran­sit cuts if King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1 is defeated.

The mea­sure, which would increase the coun­ty sales tax from 8.6 per­cent to 8.8 per­cent, is a response to the car-tab ini­tia­tive that rolled back state vehi­cle licens­ing fees to $30. State mon­ey for roads and tran­sit was slashed, and tran­sit-depen­dent King Coun­ty will get a seri­ous hit.

The Leg­is­la­ture soft­ened the blow with a one-time grant of $36 mil­lion, but 160,000 ser­vice hours were cut, and anoth­er 475,000 hours are at stake in next Tues­day’s election.

Though the state Supreme Court struck down I‑695, the finan­cial impacts remain.

Tran­sit has two kinds of clients. Com­muters are a large bloc who ride the bus to work, but have an alternative.

Pare back bus routes, and more cars will blos­som on roads.

Well said, 2000 Seat­tle Times! If we don’t pro­tect our Metro routes, grid­lock will only get worse. Metro rid­ers who do own vehi­cles aren’t going to keep rid­ing the bus if ser­vice becomes infre­quent and incon­ve­nient as a result of deep cuts.

In 2006, the Seat­tle Times con­tin­ued its pro-Metro advo­ca­cy by back­ing a pro­pos­al nick­named Tran­sit Now to cre­ate sev­er­al RapidRide lines through­out the coun­ty, argu­ing the increase in the sales tax was well worth it:

Of all the trans­porta­tion-relat­ed mon­ey mea­sures fac­ing vot­ers the next few years, the eas­i­est “yes” vote belongs to King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 2, which boosts bus ser­vice through­out the county.

The down­side of the “Tran­sit Now” propo­si­tion is it would raise our already-high sales tax one-tenth of 1 per­cent. The upside, a dra­mat­ic increase in bus ser­vice through­out the region, is alto­geth­er more impor­tant. This for­ward-look­ing plan promis­es such reli­able bus ser­vice that rid­ers along key lines can throw away their bus sched­ules. Anoth­er bus will be along short­ly, with­in 10 minutes.

That edi­to­r­i­al went on to say:

Traf­fic in our area, espe­cial­ly in our rapid­ly grow­ing sub­urbs, is reach­ing a break­ing point.

The region can­not accom­mo­date an employ­ment pop­u­la­tion pro­ject­ed to grow by 22 per­cent over the next decade if our entire focus is on cars. Bus­es are flex­i­ble and rea­son­ably priced. We need a depend­able bus sys­tem to ease the headaches of antic­i­pat­ed high­way con­struc­tion, such as replace­ment of the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

This worth­while invest­ment would raise $50 mil­lion a year at the begin­ning, $75 mil­lion a year the 10th year. It would like­ly con­vert thou­sands of auto­mo­bile dri­vers into bus rid­ers and take some of the sting out of the dai­ly commute.

The jux­ta­po­si­tion between these edi­to­ri­als and yes­ter­day’s is real­ly something.

2006 Seat­tle Times is cor­rect. We do indeed need a depend­able bus sys­tem to ease the headaches of high­way con­struc­tion. But we won’t have one if we don’t pass Propo­si­tion 1, because ser­vice would be cut sys­tem-wide by about 17%. 2014 Seat­tle Times failed to men­tion this, but it is worth not­ing that the cuts would fall dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly hard­er on rur­al and sub­ur­ban communities.

Two years after endors­ing Tran­sit Now, one of the argu­ments the Seat­tle Times used against Sound Tran­sit Propo­si­tion 1 (which pro­posed extend­ing light rail in three direc­tions) was that we should be fund­ing Metro instead:

No doubt, more peo­ple will take tran­sit. But they will demand ser­vice over a wide area — and a price they can afford. Wide and cheap. A spi­der web of service.

In King Coun­ty, that’s Metro: It costs 0.9 cents of tax on every dol­lar and has bus­es that go to more than 9,000 stops.

In the very first install­ment of the Flash­back series, we turned to the 1996 Seat­tle Times to help us refute the argu­ment that we should not be build­ing light rail.

Now we see that the Seat­tle Times has turned its back on Metro as well as on Sound Tran­sit. The trans­for­ma­tion is com­plete. Frank Blethen’s op-ed page is now a full fledged mem­ber of the anti-tran­sit lib­er­tar­i­an fly­ing circus.

The Times says we need to send coun­ty gov­ern­ment “a mes­sage” by vot­ing no, but last year, it was for con­ti­nu­ity in coun­ty gov­ern­ment, not for “throw­ing the bums out”. It endorsed Dow Con­stan­tine and the return­ing incum­bents on the coun­ty coun­cil for reelec­tion who faced chal­lengers. Of Con­stan­tine, the Times wrote:

Dow Con­stan­tine deserves to be re-elect­ed — and no doubt will be re-elect­ed — as King Coun­ty executive.

He has done a good job even in the eyes of many who vot­ed for his oppo­nent. He has been an able admin­is­tra­tor of coun­ty gov­ern­ment dur­ing a time of pro­longed eco­nom­ic weakness.

King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1 has the unan­i­mous sup­port of the King Coun­ty Coun­cil as well as Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine. We have to won­der: Why is it the Times does­n’t trust the word of the very peo­ple it sup­port­ed to gov­ern King Coun­ty, who have patient­ly been explain­ing every­where they go why Propo­si­tion 1 is necessary?

Maybe it’s because the Times, like Rod­ney Tom, fears that pas­sage of Propo­si­tion 1 would pre­vent the road war­riors in the Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus from using Metro as a pawn in future nego­ti­a­tions over a statewide trans­porta­tion package.

What­ev­er Frank Blethen’s real rea­sons may be for oppos­ing Propo­si­tion 1, the rest of us can’t afford to live in the fan­ta­sy world he and his edi­to­r­i­al board increas­ing­ly inhab­it. Metro’s peers to the north and south have respond­ed to rev­enue short­falls by evis­cer­at­ing ser­vice. If we were to do the same in King Coun­ty, traf­fic would become much worse than it is today, hurt­ing our qual­i­ty of life, neg­a­tive­ly impact­ing freight mobil­i­ty, and leav­ing fam­i­lies in many com­mu­ni­ties stranded.

We are for Propo­si­tion 1 because play­ing games with Metro’s future and ignor­ing our roads main­te­nance back­log would be a dan­ger­ous mistake.

Like the 2014 Seat­tle Times edi­to­r­i­al board would if it had any of the sense of its pre­de­ces­sors, we urge an enthu­si­as­tic yes vote.