I‑976 proponent Dori Monson is at it again with his absurd, silly conspiracy theories

Dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman has no greater friend right now than Dori Mon­son of KIRO FM, who enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly backs Eyman’s efforts to take a sledge­ham­mer to essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices that he does­n’t believe in, like the high capac­i­ty tran­sit ser­vices Sound Tran­sit designs and deploys with vot­er approval.

Eyman’s I‑976, which is cur­rent­ly being vot­ed upon by Wash­ing­ton vot­ers, would repeal bil­lions in bipar­ti­san, vot­er-autho­rized trans­porta­tion invest­ments at the state, region­al, and local lev­els. Dori thinks that’s a great thing, and he has arguably been even more exu­ber­ant than Eyman has in exhort­ing peo­ple to vote yes on Eyman’s incred­i­bly irre­spon­si­ble, short­sight­ed measure.

Hav­ing attacked Sound Tran­sit so often and for so long, Dori was evi­dent­ly in want of some fresh mate­r­i­al for anoth­er pro-I-976 rant for today’s show.

So he decid­ed to base­less­ly claim that the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (WSDOT) delib­er­ate­ly closed a lane on the Auro­ra Avenue Bridge, which car­ries SR 99 over the Ship Canal, to ben­e­fit the NO on I‑976 campaign.

Said Dori:

Does any­body — and I mean any­body — believe that the sud­den Auro­ra Bridge repairs are a coincidence?

We got word Sun­day night from the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion that they have to close a lane on the Auro­ra Bridge because of prob­lems with the steel sup­ports hold­ing up the bridge.

What a coinkidink! It comes just one week before you have to get your bal­lots in, on which the most hot­ly-con­test­ed issue is, of course, the ini­tia­tive for $30 car tabs, I‑976. And bridges have been at the cen­ter of the “no on 976” campaign.

Dori, I have a hard time believ­ing that you actu­al­ly believe this non­sense your­self. I imag­ine you’re just try­ing to rile peo­ple up, as that is how you get ratings.

But in the off chance you do believe what you’re say­ing, then I have a propo­si­tion for you. I hap­pen to own a very nice, six lane bridge that spans the Ship Canal in Seat­tle. It’s a cru­cial facil­i­ty that the city can’t do with­out, and it’s a fan­tas­tic invest­ment that will yield an excel­lent return. It even has its own res­i­dent troll that you could use for toll col­lec­tion pur­pos­es. I’m look­ing for a new own­er who can pay upfront quick­ly. Wan­na make a deal and buy a bridge from me?

Snark aside, it is WSDOT’s job to inspect, retro­fit, and repair state-owned bridges on a year-round basis. WSDOT is respon­si­ble for 3,932 bridge struc­tures, and two hun­dred and eighty of its bridges are eighty years old or old­er. WSDOT’s lat­est peri­od­ic report states that is a six per­cent increase over last year’s tal­ly of eighty-year old bridges, and rep­re­sents 7% of the agen­cy’s bridges.

WSDOT isn’t work­ing on the Auro­ra Avenue Bridge in order to help the NO on I‑976 cam­paign; it’s work­ing on the bridge to keep the pub­lic safe.

Any­one with a brain and the abil­i­ty to think crit­i­cal­ly should be able to intu­itive­ly under­stand this. Any­one with a work­ing moral com­pass should be able to refrain from using their plat­form to cir­cu­late mis­in­for­ma­tion to the public.

WSDOT’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions staff patient­ly explained this to Dori, but he still chose to ped­dle his base­less, absurd, irre­spon­si­ble con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry on-air.

Bart Treece, com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er for WSDOT’s North­west Region, told me that the bridge repairs had noth­ing to do with 976, and were the result of a rou­tine inspec­tion that occurs every oth­er autumn.

“Safe­ty is our first pri­or­i­ty … we have a respon­si­bil­i­ty, when we see some­thing that needs to be addressed, to take imme­di­ate action,” he said. He said that the sec­ond inspec­tion was done over the week­end rather than on a week­day so as not to dis­rupt commuters.

They chose not to do any of this over the sum­mer, when there already were lane clo­sures on the bridge because it was appar­ent­ly too much at one time. The out­side south­bound lane was the most impor­tant to close because that por­tion of the bridge is not “han­dling the weight that it should,” accord­ing to Treece.

“By clos­ing that one lane, we can keep traf­fic mov­ing and still reduce the strain until that por­tion is repaired,” he explained.

It should also be not­ed that WSDOT cur­rent­ly has projects under­way to repaint the Auro­ra Avenue Bridge and repave State Route 99 in Seat­tle from Roy Street to North 145th (that stretch of the high­way was last resur­faced in 1999). These projects are fund­ed by gas tax rev­enue, WSDOT’s Tom Pearce says.

Twelve years ago at this time, Wash­ing­ton was in the midst of a bat­tle royale over whether to sus­tain or repeal a gas tax increase passed by the Leg­is­la­ture to fund high­way improve­ments. The Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling coali­tion, which is cur­rent­ly work­ing to defeat I‑976, ulti­mate­ly pre­vailed after wag­ing a ground­break­ing cam­paign, hand­i­ly defeat­ing Kir­by Wilbur and John Carl­son’s I‑912.

I was involved in that cam­paign, and remem­ber it well. I espe­cial­ly remem­ber Tim Eyman con­fi­dent­ly declar­ing that I‑912 was guar­an­teed to pass.

Whoops. 🙂

What made the dif­fer­ence in the fight against I‑912 was that Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling com­mit­ted itself to wag­ing a tru­ly statewide cam­paign that was not con­fined to King Coun­ty. The coali­tion appealed to vot­ers in every cor­ner of the state to pro­tect Wash­ing­ton’s future by reject­ing I‑912.

And vot­ers responded.

The coali­tion secured a vic­to­ry in a third of the state’s thir­ty-nine coun­ties, includ­ing Spokane, Clark, Pierce, Sno­homish, and even Wal­la Walla.

Keep Wash­ing­ton Rolling will need to pull off a sim­i­lar feat this year to bring I‑976 down. This cam­paign isn’t going to be decid­ed by Seattle/King Coun­ty, where the Auro­ra Avenue Bridge is locat­ed. It will be decid­ed in com­mu­ni­ties like Lyn­nwood, Spokane, Puyallup, Mount Ver­non, Camano Island, and Bremerton.

We have about one week left to make our case against I‑976 before the elec­tion wraps up. If you have not yet checked out our I‑976 Impact Map, then we urge you to do so now. Click or tap the but­ton with the arrows belong to enter fullscreen mode and see for your­self exam­ples of projects that could be hurt by the imple­men­ta­tion of Tim Eyman’s incred­i­bly destruc­tive I‑976.

Vote NO on I‑976 by Novem­ber 5th, 2019.