Irresponsible Republicans escalate their legislative attacks on Sound Transit and ST3

As Tim Eyman’s ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry sits idle due to his con­stant lies and decep­tions hav­ing final­ly caught up with him, Repub­li­cans in the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture have decid­ed to take up one of Eyman’s favorite caus­es them­selves: destroy­ing Sound Tran­sit, the region­al agency tasked with build­ing the rail spine our region needs to lib­er­ate more com­muters from increas­ing­ly clogged highways.

Eyman has want­ed Sound Tran­sit pul­ver­ized for a very, very long time, but his repeat­ed attempts to sab­o­tage ST’s fund­ing have end­ed in fail­ure. Sound Tran­sit has suc­cess­ful­ly built thir­ty-five kilo­me­ters of light rail link­ing togeth­er six­teen sta­tions. Thir­teen of those opened in 2009 and three more opened last year. Dozens more sta­tions and miles of track are either under con­struc­tion or in the plan­ning stages.

Last year, as Sound Tran­sit was get­ting ready to go to the bal­lot with ST3, Eyman was des­per­ate­ly try­ing to get his wealthy bene­fac­tors and the Repub­li­can Par­ty inter­est­ed in giv­ing him megabucks to qual­i­fy a new statewide ini­tia­tive to dis­man­tle and defund Sound Tran­sit. (It also would have tar­get­ed Amtrak Cascades.)

“The thing that is deli­cious­ly fun about this year’s [Ini­tia­tive 1421] is that guts like a pig Sound Tran­sit. That’s what real­ly makes it fun,” Eyman told a gath­er­ing of the East­side Repub­li­can Club on March 1st, 2016. 

Eyman reit­er­at­ed that sen­ti­ment lat­er in his pre­sen­ta­tion: “What gets me gid­dy is the idea of rip­ping the heart out of Sound Tran­sit. This agency is so unac­count­able, so rogue, so com­plete­ly devoid of any real­i­ty that this is our one chance to be able to gut them like a pig, and that’s what I real­ly love about this initiative.” 

Eyman argued that fund­ing I‑1421 was the best way to put a stop to Sound Tran­sit 3, pre­dict­ing (cor­rect­ly) that a con­ven­tion­al “no” cam­paign would fail.

But hav­ing dou­ble-crossed and duped so many peo­ple for so long, Eyman was unable to win com­mit­ments to get I‑1421 fund­ed. Eyman gave up on I‑1421 sev­er­al weeks lat­er and start­ed over with I‑869, an ini­tia­tive to the 2017 Leg­is­la­ture with large­ly the same text. But that ini­tia­tive met the same fate as I‑1421. Mean­while, Sound Tran­sit 3 appeared on the bal­lot and passed handily.

In the wake of the elec­tion, Repub­li­cans in the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture became deeply inter­est­ed in Eyman’s cause. Steve O’Ban (R‑28th Dis­trict: Lake­wood, Uni­ver­si­ty Place, Taco­ma) was first out of the gate with a bill to sab­o­tage Sound Tran­sit. O’Ban was able to get his bill through the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate last month, but it has been lan­guish­ing in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives ever since, with House Democ­rats refus­ing to lift a fin­ger to help O’Ban wage war on Sound Transit.

House Repub­li­cans are furi­ous that their Demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­ter­parts won’t give O’Ban’s mali­cious bill a hear­ing, or take puni­tive action against Sound Tran­sit. So they have been doing some plot­ting of their own, as Melis­sa San­tos reports:

Repub­li­cans will try to push through sev­er­al mea­sures to address con­cerns about Sound Tran­sit 3, the $54 bil­lion tran­sit pack­age vot­ers approved in Novem­ber, in a bat­tle on the floor of the state House Wednesday.

GOP law­mak­ers, who are in the minor­i­ty in the House, say they’re frus­trat­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers haven’t advanced pro­pos­als to reduce the cost of car tab fees asso­ci­at­ed with Sound Tran­sit 3, as well as to let juris­dic­tions opt out of the Sound Tran­sit tax­ing district.

Repub­li­cans will try to to amend the state’s trans­porta­tion bud­get to address those issues Wednes­day, said state Rep. J.T. Wilcox, R‑Yelm, the House minor­i­ty floor leader.

If those amend­ments are reject­ed or can’t move for­ward, GOP law­mak­ers will most like­ly attempt a pro­ce­dur­al move to bring sev­er­al Sound Tran­sit-relat­ed bills direct­ly to the floor for a vote, Wilcox said.

It does­n’t look like the trans­porta­tion bud­get will be com­ing to the floor today, but it’s still shame­ful that Repub­li­cans are wast­ing so much time and ener­gy try­ing to reverse the will of the vot­ers, which they have his­tor­i­cal­ly pro­fessed to care about.

We have long mem­o­ries here at NPI, and we well remem­ber all those floor speech­es giv­en by Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors declar­ing Tim Eyman ini­tia­tives sacrosanct.

They’ve gone bal­lis­tic every time pro­gres­sives have filed legal chal­lenges against Eyman’s schemes to uphold our Con­sti­tu­tion. Every oth­er sen­tence out of their mouths includ­ed the words the will of the vot­ers.

Well, the vot­ers decreed last fall that Sound Tran­sit should be autho­rized to extend light rail north, south, east, and west — to Taco­ma, Everett, down­town Red­mond, Bal­lard, and West Seat­tle — not to men­tion expand Sounder and ST Express and add two bus rapid tran­sit lines. That was their will.

Leg­isla­tive Repub­li­cans did­n’t like the out­come of that vote then and they don’t like it now — even though they’re the ones who made it all pos­si­ble.

Leg­isla­tive approval of the 2015 Con­nect­ing Wash­ing­ton trans­porta­tion pack­age, passed with a bipar­ti­san vote of the House and the Sen­ate, is what gave Sound Tran­sit the author­i­ty to levy motor vehi­cle excise tax­es, prop­er­ty tax­es, and sales tax­es that fund ST3 projects. Most Sen­ate Repub­li­cans vot­ed aye on this leg­is­la­tion — includ­ing Steve O’Ban — and so did many House Republicans.

Sound Tran­sit itself is a cre­ation of the Leg­is­la­ture as well. Back in the 1990s, the House and the Sen­ate gave ST life by vot­ing to autho­rize the for­ma­tion of a Region­al Tran­sit Author­i­ty (RTA) in the state’s three largest counties.

Sound Tran­sit was giv­en a juris­dic­tion span­ning neigh­bor­hoods with­in the urban growth bound­ary, as the agen­cy’s mis­sion was to devel­op high capac­i­ty tran­sit with­in the state’s dense urban and sub­ur­ban core.

Sound Tran­sit is doing impor­tant, effec­tive work. After a rough begin­ning, ST is now one of the best-man­aged pub­lic agen­cies any­where. It had a ban­ner year last year, open­ing three light rail sta­tions ahead of sched­ule and under budget.

But that does­n’t mat­ter to Repub­li­can road war­riors like Steve O’Ban and Dino Rossi. They are so enam­ored with widen­ing and expand­ing high­ways that they are will­ing to raise tax­es for that pur­pose. They will not sup­port rais­ing rev­enue to amply fund our schools as the Con­sti­tu­tion requires, but they will cast a vote to waste­ful­ly give WSDOT the mon­ey to make high­ways like I‑5 and I‑405 bigger.

I say “waste­ful­ly” because widen­ing high­ways actu­al­ly makes traf­fic con­ges­tion worse due to the phe­nom­e­non of induced demand. Induced demand can be explained with the fol­low­ing apho­rism: Try­ing to reduce con­ges­tion by adding lanes is like try­ing to lose weight by loos­en­ing your belt. It’s ineffective.

The expe­ri­ence of cities and states all over the coun­try (and abroad, as well) is that adding lanes encour­ages peo­ple to dri­ve more and take more trips. The net effect is that traf­fic even­tu­al­ly becomes even worse than it was before.

Adding lanes does­n’t help, but adding tran­sit ser­vice does. Why? Because a robust tran­sit net­work that serves more com­mu­ni­ties gives peo­ple alter­na­tives to dri­ving. Rail tran­sit in par­tic­u­lar offers a way to move through a con­gest­ed cor­ri­dor with­out a car. It appeals strong­ly to com­muters because it is reli­able and frequent.

When Uni­ver­si­ty Link opened a year ago, it did­n’t just ben­e­fit peo­ple liv­ing and work­ing in Capi­tol Hill or the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton’s cam­pus. Metro and Sound Tran­sit sen­si­bly worked togeth­er to recon­fig­ure bus ser­vice to cre­ate lots of bus+rail con­nec­tions so that peo­ple liv­ing and work­ing fur­ther away could ben­e­fit, too.

One of these con­nect­ing routes is the 542 Express, a Sound Tran­sit bus with an east­ern ter­mi­nus a block away from NPI’s Red­mond headquarters.

Using the 542, I can con­nect to Link light rail for a trip down­town, and com­plete­ly bypass the awful traf­fic on both Inter­state 5 and Stew­art Street, which I’d oth­er­wise have to endure if I were rid­ing the 545, Sound Tran­sit’s main Red­mond-Seat­tle route. The 545 rocks and has attract­ed high rid­er­ship for years, but it has an Achilles heel: it is a sur­face-only route that is sus­cep­ti­ble to traf­fic delays.

When I‑5 and Stew­art Street are mov­ing freely, the 545 is reli­able and quick, but at rush hour or dur­ing a protest down­town, the 545 is often delayed.

Hav­ing anoth­er option (Link + 542) is a great blessing.

Every time we bring light rail to anoth­er neigh­bor­hood, it opens up pos­si­bil­i­ties for peo­ple. We saw that last year with Uni­ver­si­ty Link and Angle Lake Link. Light rail means greater free­dom and greater mobil­i­ty for our peo­ple. When ST3 is com­plet­ed, the region will have a rail spine that is tru­ly region­al in scope.

Blind­ed by ide­ol­o­gy and greed, leg­isla­tive Repub­li­cans can­not see the val­ue of invest­ing in tran­sit for all — or in our schools, for that mat­ter. They would rather plot end­less­ly to take away a tran­sit invest­ment the vot­ers already approved instead of work­ing with Democ­rats in good faith to com­ply with the Supreme Court’s orders regard­ing the state’s com­pli­ance with Arti­cle IX, Sec­tion 1 of our 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.

– Arti­cle IX, Sec­tion 1, Wash­ing­ton State Constitution

The Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion was writ­ten by a group of men who were most­ly Repub­li­can. They thought pub­lic edu­ca­tion was so impor­tant that they gave us the pre­am­ble above. Today’s Repub­li­cans are will­ing to pay lip ser­vice to that ide­al, but not mon­ey. Every time Democ­rats pro­pose a way to increase fund­ing to pub­lic schools with­out jeop­ar­diz­ing oth­er vital ser­vices, Repub­li­cans say NO.

The end of the 2017 reg­u­lar ses­sion is fast approach­ing (adjourn­ment will hap­pen on April 23rd), and we still do not have an oper­at­ing bud­get for 2017–2019, or a plan to bol­ster school fund­ing that sat­is­fies the Supreme Court’s orders.

It seems we’re des­tined for mul­ti­ple spe­cial ses­sions, because leg­isla­tive Repub­li­cans are just not inter­est­ed in doing the jobs they were elect­ed to do. They’d rather scheme against Sound Tran­sit than do right by our teach­ers and schoolchildren.