House Transportation Chair not interested in messing with Sound Transit’s governance

A bill recent­ly passed by the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate that would oust Sound Tran­sit’s cur­rent board of direc­tors and set the stage for a hos­tile takeover of the agency by right wing, anti-rail forces is des­tined to die in com­mit­tee, House Trans­porta­tion Chair Judy Clib­born indi­cat­ed in an inter­view pub­lished this morning.

Speak­ing to the Seat­tle Times’ David Gut­man, Clib­born (D‑41st Dis­trict: Mer­cer Island, Belle­vue, Issaquah Sam­mamish) made it clear she does­n’t like the bill. She had pre­vi­ous­ly com­mit­ted to giv­ing it a hear­ing in remarks made to Melis­sa San­tos of The News Tri­bune. But it sounds like that’s all the bill will get.

As Sound Tran­sit embarks on a decades-long project to add 62 miles of light rail to the Puget Sound region, the Repub­li­can-con­trolled Sen­ate passed a bill last week that would revamp the agency’s lead­er­ship, like­ly result­ing in all cur­rent board mem­bers being replaced in 2018.

That pro­pos­al appears dead on arrival in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic-con­trolled House, where Rep. Judy Clib­born, who chairs the House Trans­porta­tion Com­mit­tee, the bill’s next des­ti­na­tion, says she has no inter­est in it.

“I don’t know that we get a lot of effi­cien­cy by going down that road,” said Clib­born, D‑Mercer Island. “I’m not real intrigued by that idea.”

It’s great to hear that SSB 5001 is unlike­ly to advance in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. But it’s still impor­tant we show up to speak out against this bad bill. Pro­po­nents dom­i­nat­ed the hear­ing on the Sen­ate side because they were orga­nized and the tran­sit com­mu­ni­ty did­n’t show up in opposition.

A hear­ing on SSB 5001 is like­ly to be sched­uled for the week of March 13th.

Clib­born has (to her cred­it) shown a will­ing­ness in the past to put the kibosh on inap­pro­pri­ate schemes to mess with Sound Tran­sit’s governance.

Ten years ago, this orga­ni­za­tion was fight­ing against a sim­i­lar­ly bad bill — SB 5803 — which had sailed out of the Sen­ate under the radar of tran­sit advo­cates. NPI began work­ing to orga­nize oppo­si­tion to the bill fol­low­ing the Sen­ate vote. Thank­ful­ly, Clib­born and the House Trans­porta­tion Com­mit­tee put the brakes on the bill, and it uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly died when they decid­ed it did not deserve to move forward.

As a result of that deci­sion, Sound Tran­sit was able to con­tin­ue rolling for­ward free of mis­guid­ed inter­fer­ence. It suc­cess­ful­ly won approval for a Phase II expan­sion the fol­low­ing year and then won approval for a Phase III expan­sion last year (2016) uti­liz­ing new rev­enue author­i­ty grant­ed to it by the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture — rev­enue author­i­ty that SSB 5001 prime spon­sor Steve O’Ban vot­ed for.

The Seat­tle Times’ David Gut­man also reached out to the gov­er­nor’s office regard­ing the bill and found out that Inslee oppos­es SSB 5001 too:

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov. Jay Inslee, like­wise, is not gung-ho on reor­ga­niz­ing Sound Tran­sit. “He’s con­fi­dent the cur­rent board struc­ture can get the job done,” said Tara Lee, an Inslee spokeswoman.

So are we.

We con­cur with Clib­born that the Leg­is­la­ture has seri­ous, actu­al pri­or­i­ties that need attend­ing to. Empow­er­ing Sound Tran­sit to more fair­ly col­lect vehi­cle fees is cer­tain­ly worth a dis­cus­sion. The cur­rent archa­ic for­mu­la that Sound Tran­sit inher­it­ed from the state stinks, and it ought to be scrapped and replaced. There’s a bet­ter for­mu­la that’s actu­al­ly already on the books, as Gut­man point­ed out.

Sound Tran­sit needs to be able to build the sys­tem that it promised, and vehi­cle fees are an impor­tant part of the financ­ing mix. Sound Tran­sit has sold bonds that old­er  vehi­cle fee rev­enues are pledged to. The Leg­is­la­ture must not jeop­ar­dize Sound Tran­sit’s fund­ing or cred­it rat­ing if it takes any action to address this issue.