Steve O’Ban’s scheme to mess with Sound Transit’s governance should be rejected

Recent­ly reelect­ed Repub­li­can State Sen­a­tor Steve O’Ban announced a few days ago he plans to file a new bill that would dra­mat­i­cal­ly change how Sound Tran­sit is gov­erned. O’Ban’s pro­pos­al would replace the agen­cy’s effec­tive fed­er­at­ed board with a brand new board of tran­sit com­mis­sion­ers that right wing mil­lion­aires like Kem­per Free­man, Jr. could attempt to stack in peri­od­ic elections.

This actu­al­ly isn’t a new idea — some­one comes along and pro­pos­es it almost every leg­isla­tive ses­sion. We’ve been edi­to­ri­al­iz­ing against var­i­ous incar­na­tions of schemes to mess with Sound Tran­sit for almost ten years here on the Cas­ca­dia Advocate.

But this promised bill does­n’t deserve to gain any trac­tion dur­ing next year’s long leg­isla­tive ses­sion, so we encour­age oth­er orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­ual activists to join us and Seat­tle Tran­sit Blog in speak­ing out against it now.

O’Ban obvi­ous­ly does­n’t care that Sound Tran­sit just won a man­date from vot­ers to expand light rail, Express bus ser­vice, and Sounder com­muter rail with the pas­sage of ST3, or that the Leg­is­la­ture itself made ST3 pos­si­ble last year when it approved the Con­nect­ing Wash­ing­ton pack­age, which gave Sound Tran­sit the rev­enue author­i­ty it need­ed to finance the projects in the ST3 package.

No, O’Ban — like oth­er mem­bers of the Sen­ate Repub­li­can cau­cus — want to put as many bad ideas on the table as pos­si­ble as the upcom­ing ses­sion approach­es, both to dis­tract us and dom­i­nate the pub­lic discourse.

Repub­li­cans want the nar­ra­tive com­ing out of ses­sion to be dri­ven by their agen­da. They don’t want pro­gres­sives going on offense again like we did in this recent­ly-con­clud­ed elec­tion, where we advanced the caus­es of eco­nom­ic jus­tice, gun respon­si­bil­i­ty, clean elec­tions, and tran­sit for all through a host of suc­cess­ful bal­lot mea­sures. But stay­ing on offense is exact­ly what we need to do.

Sound Tran­sit lead­ers need to focus on deliv­er­ing what the vot­ers vot­ed for, and we’re con­fi­dent that they will — the impor­tant and nec­es­sary work of imple­ment­ing ST3 has actu­al­ly already begun.

Leg­is­la­tors like O’Ban, mean­while, need to do their jobs.

The Leg­is­la­ture is present­ly in con­tempt of court for fail­ing to uphold Arti­cle IX of our state Con­sti­tu­tion (“It is the para­mount duty of the state to make ample pro­vi­sion for the edu­ca­tion of all chil­dren resid­ing with­in its bor­ders, with­out dis­tinc­tion or pref­er­ence on account of race, col­or, caste, or sex.”)

Leg­is­la­tors like O’Ban — and Doug Erick­sen and Michael Baum­gart­ner — should be devot­ing their ener­gies to com­ply­ing with the Supreme Court’s orders to get our schools prop­er­ly fund­ed, not intro­duc­ing bills to mess with Sound Tran­sit’s gov­er­nance or crim­i­nal­ize protests against the fos­sil fuel industry.

The crit­ics don’t like to admit it, but Sound Tran­sit already hap­pens to be gov­erned by indi­vid­u­als direct­ly elect­ed by vot­ers in King, Pierce, and Sno­homish coun­ties. The only mem­ber of ST’s board who isn’t an elect­ed offi­cial is the Sec­re­tary of Trans­porta­tion (cur­rent­ly Roger Mil­lar). The rest of the board­mem­bers are may­ors, coun­ty exec­u­tives, coun­ty coun­cilmem­bers, and city councilmembers.

We trust and empow­er these same peo­ple to make impor­tant region­al and local deci­sions about land use, stormwa­ter runoff, build­ing codes, and a host of oth­er issues. The beau­ty of the fed­er­at­ed board mod­el is that it brings togeth­er elect­ed lead­ers from both lev­els of local gov­ern­ment (coun­ty and city) who have exper­tise deliv­er­ing pub­lic ser­vices to the peo­ple of our region.

It’s been twen­ty years since the Sound Move vote of 1996, but it’s appar­ent there are still peo­ple out there who seem to not under­stand what Sound Tran­sit actu­al­ly is or real­ly does — which is odd, con­sid­er­ing ST’s high profile.

Sound Tran­sit exists because vision­ary lead­ers like Ruth Fish­er real­ized decades ago that build­ing a use­ful region­al tran­sit sys­tem could not hap­pen with­out region­al coop­er­a­tion. And so the Leg­is­la­ture cre­at­ed the Region­al Tran­sit Author­i­ty (which we know as Sound Tran­sit) to enable cen­tral Puget Sound to come togeth­er to deter­mine how best to link togeth­er its com­mu­ni­ties with high capac­i­ty transit.

Sound Tran­sit was designed as a vehi­cle for cities and coun­ties to join forces, pool­ing resources to improve mobil­i­ty for mil­lions of peo­ple. ST is not just a munic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tion. It’s a forum — a space for collaboration.

A space where part­ner­ships can be forged.

It is there­fore appro­pri­ate that ST has a board con­sist­ing of city may­ors, coun­ty exec­u­tives, and city and coun­ty coun­cilmem­bers, because ST’s most impor­tant part­ners are its con­stituent cities and counties.

But the list does­n’t end there.

Sound Tran­sit does a lot of plan­ning in-house, but it relies on part­ners to con­struct and oper­ate all of its ser­vices. Its fre­quent project part­ners include the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment (Fed­er­al Tran­sit Admin­is­tra­tion), Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion, the Port of Seat­tle, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Washington.

Burling­ton North­ern San­ta Fe oper­ates Sounder com­muter rail, King Coun­ty Metro oper­ates Link light rail, and Pierce Tran­sit, Com­mu­ni­ty Tran­sit, and Metro each oper­ate the many ST Express routes you’ll see on ST’s sys­tem map.

An even longer list of con­trac­tors and union work­forces, mean­while, pro­vide the cap­i­tal and labor need­ed to con­struct the infra­struc­ture required to bring the projects Sound Tran­sit and its part­ners con­ceive to fruition.

Now, gov­ern­ments every­where reg­u­lar­ly uti­lize part­ner­ships to get things done. But Sound Tran­sit does­n’t just uti­lize part­ner­ships to suc­ceed — it depends on them. The agency would be nowhere with­out its partnerships.

Sound Tran­sit is for­tu­nate, then, that it is gov­erned by the peo­ple who rep­re­sent its most impor­tant part­ners (coun­ties and cities). And we, in turn, are for­tu­nate Sound Tran­sit was well designed, because tran­sit for all is an essen­tial need.

We want results, and ST is get­ting results for us.

It is a tes­ta­ment to CEO Emer­i­tus Joni Earl and her staff that they have been able to bring all par­ties to the table to deliv­er Link light rail, ST Express, and Sounder to an increas­ing num­ber of neigh­bor­hoods. This year alone, Sound Tran­sit opened three new light rail sta­tions: one at the south­ern end of the line and two at the north­ern end. More sta­tions are already under construction.

Vot­ers like what they see, and want more just as soon as can be arranged.

ST’s crit­ics have been say­ing for years that Sound Tran­sit’s gov­er­nance stinks, even as the agen­cy’s track record has got­ten bet­ter and better.

But let’s face it: these crit­ics want to shake up Sound Tran­sit’s gov­er­nance because they’re not in con­trol of the agency and they want to be. They can­not cred­i­bly claim to have Sound Tran­sit’s best inter­ests at heart. They are not root­ing for Sound Tran­sit to suc­ceed. They haven’t in the past and they are unlike­ly to in the future.

They do not want Puget Sound to invest in a rail spine that will lib­er­ate peo­ple from being forced to dri­ve to get to where they want to go — even though that’s what the major­i­ty of the peo­ple keep demon­strat­ing that they want.

Sound Tran­sit is not like a port, school dis­trict, or water dis­trict, and it should­n’t be man­aged like one. The peo­ple who keep insist­ing that we need to have a bunch of trans­porta­tion com­mis­sion­ers run­ning Sound Tran­sit instead of the fed­er­at­ed board we have now are prin­ci­pal­ly insid­ers who want to stop Sound Tran­sit from doing what it is doing — even in the wake of a suc­cess­ful pub­lic vote.

There is no out­cry from the rid­ing pub­lic to change how Sound Tran­sit is governed.

Replac­ing Sound Tran­sit’s cur­rent board won’t make it more account­able, won’t speed up deliv­ery of projects, and won’t lead to bet­ter out­comes. Steve O’Ban’s pro­posed bill is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive and does­n’t deserve to pass Go.