Dori Monson attacks NPI and bashes Seattle Times reporter Heidi Groover’s recent work

Last week, the Office of Finan­cial Man­age­ment (OFM) released its analy­sis of the fis­cal impact of Tim Eyman’s Ini­tia­tive 976, find­ing that more than $4 bil­lion in bipar­ti­san and vot­er-approved trans­porta­tion invest­ments would be wiped out by the ini­tia­tive, gut­ting projects and ser­vices at the state, region­al, and local levels.

Seat­tle Times reporter Hei­di Groover was tasked with writ­ing a sto­ry about the fis­cal impact state­ment and did an excel­lent job sum­ma­riz­ing the fis­cal impacts and get­ting reac­tion from both sides — the no camp and Tim Eyman, the dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er who is the author and chief pro­po­nent of I‑976.

KIRO’s res­i­dent blovi­a­tor Dori Mon­son — who is one of Eyman’s staunchest allies and loathes Sound Tran­sit with a pas­sion — took notice of Groover’s report­ing over the week­end, which appeared above-the-fold in Sat­ur­day’s print edi­tion of The Seat­tle Times. The seem­ing­ly always grumpy Mon­son trashed Groover’s sto­ry at length on his show today, impugn­ing it as “slant­ed” and not “bal­anced”.

“I don’t like to crit­i­cize The Seat­tle Times,” Mon­son began, before pro­ceed­ing to do exact­ly that. He seemed par­tic­u­lar­ly offend­ed that I was quot­ed in the story.

Rant­ed Dori:

“They quote a far left group — Andrew Vil­leneuve, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, which oppos­es the ini­tia­tive — [who said] ‘The num­bers are pret­ty dev­as­tat­ing.’ Why do they nev­er call me? Dori Mon­son, local talk show host, says the num­bers are fan­tas­tic for taxpayers.”

Yo, Dori! I know how much you hate Sound Tran­sit, dis­like NPI’s work, and want this destruc­tive Eyman mea­sure to pass. But that’s no rea­son to attack Hei­di Groover’s report­ing. There was noth­ing wrong with Hei­di’s sto­ry. It was fac­tu­al. It was bal­anced. It cap­tured the reac­tion of both sides — your side and our side.

What you real­ly seem to be upset about is that the sto­ry was­n’t slant­ed in favor of your side like a seg­ment on your show would be, or a Tim Eyman email would be.

This is a news­pa­per sto­ry about a statewide ini­tia­tive’s fis­cal impact state­ment. Appro­pri­ate­ly, the sto­ry’s lede con­cerns what we col­lec­tive­ly stand to lose as a soci­ety of more than sev­en mil­lion peo­ple if the ini­tia­tive is imple­ment­ed, as opposed to inap­pro­pri­ate­ly repeat­ing Eyman’s tired, very worn sales pitch.

It would be wrong if the sto­ry was writ­ten from your point of view. As you your­self con­ced­ed dur­ing your rant, you’re a com­men­ta­tor. You have a bias, which is con­tin­u­ous­ly reflect­ed in your drea­ry, unpleas­ant monologues.

We, the peo­ple, are the gov­ern­ment of Wash­ing­ton State, and we deserve to know what the cost and con­se­quences of an ini­tia­tive like I‑976 are before we cast our vote. That is why the law requires OFM to pre­pare fis­cal impact statements.

The release of the fis­cal impact state­ment was an impor­tant event in the bat­tle for and against I‑976. Rec­og­niz­ing this, The Seat­tle Times chose it for an install­ment of their ongo­ing Traf­fic Lab series, which is always worth reading.

Hei­di Groover land­ed the assign­ment of writ­ing the sto­ry. She did a good job putting it togeth­er. Your crit­i­cisms, Dori, are with­out foundation.

Eyman is quot­ed three times in the sto­ry, which alter­nates between pre­sent­ing the oppo­si­tion per­spec­tive’s, his side’s per­spec­tive, and the per­spec­tive of the peo­ple who are over­see­ing the work that the imper­iled fund­ing pays for.

Addi­tion­al­ly, in the online ver­sion of the sto­ry, there are plen­ty of hyper­links for con­text, so any­one can read fur­ther on the sub­ject if they want.

This sto­ry is unques­tion­ably sol­id jour­nal­ism. It’s not the kind of piece I would write; I’m an advo­ca­cy jour­nal­ist. But it is what I want and expect as a Seat­tle Times sub­scriber who depends on the work of our region’s biggest newsroom.

Oh, and by the way, Dori, I said the num­bers in the fis­cal impact state­ment were dev­as­tat­ing because they are dev­as­tat­ing. Imple­men­ta­tion of I‑976 would not just mean that Sound Tran­sit’s Phase III expan­sion would be jeopardized.

This mea­sure also threat­ens Amtrak Cas­cades, the deliv­ery of new fer­ries, essen­tial freight mobil­i­ty projects, the State Patrol, Seat­tle-fund­ed King Coun­try Metro bus ser­vice, and local roads in six­ty cities across Wash­ing­ton State.

You’re so blind­ed by your hate of Sound Tran­sit and your oppo­si­tion to pay­ing vehi­cle fees that you haven’t real­ly giv­en this ini­tia­tive much thought.

Have you even read the ini­tia­tive? Or the fis­cal impact state­ment?

I have. I went and con­nect­ed the dots. For each sec­tion of I‑976, my team and I ana­lyzed not only where the mon­ey is com­ing from, but where it’s going.

The mon­ey raised by vehi­cle fees is going to things we need. Side­walks. Police pro­tec­tion. The abil­i­ty to get off one of our beau­ti­ful islands and reach the main­land, or vice ver­sa. The fill­ing of pot­holes. The resur­fac­ing of decrepit, bumpy roads. Inter­ci­ty train ser­vice that pro­vides an alter­na­tive to clogged highways.

And yes… expan­sion of mass tran­sit here in the Puget Sound region. Which you don’t want, but which vot­ers here have repeat­ed­ly vot­ed for.

Why don’t you and Tim Eyman respect the will of the vot­ers, Dori?

And why aren’t you lis­ten­ing to the cap­tains of indus­try that have warned that this ini­tia­tive would be very harm­ful to Wash­ing­ton’s busi­ness climate?

Busi­ness­es through­out Wash­ing­ton oppose I‑976 because they know it’s a threat to Wash­ing­ton’s future. Even the reli­ably anti-tax Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton Busi­ness has come out in oppo­si­tion to I‑976. They under­stand that cut­ting $4 bil­lion in bipar­ti­san, vot­er approved trans­porta­tion invest­ments is utter fool­ish­ness that will injure Wash­ing­ton’s busi­ness cli­mate and cost us good pay­ing jobs.

At NPI, we believe we all do bet­ter when we all do bet­ter. We emphat­i­cal­ly sup­port pool­ing our resources through tax­es to build the infra­struc­ture and cre­ate the essen­tial ser­vices that busi­ness­es and house­holds need to thrive.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, you, Dori, do not share our cher­ished Pacif­ic North­west val­ues. Instead, you and Tim Eyman rep­re­sent the vices of greed and selfishness.

That’s the kind of think­ing we need to reject by vot­ing NO on I‑976.