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The first online-only news site in state history to get media credentials to cover the state capitol and Seattle city hall, PubliCola has been called a “must-read” by the Seattle Post Intelligencer and a hot “New Media Mover and Shaker” by Seattle Magazine—which also cited our own Erica C. Barnett as the city's No. 1 news nerd.

Last Night

Opinion, Politics, This Washington   March 24, 2010 at 11:11 am Josh Feit

Rep. Deb Eddy: Skeptical

There’s a tidy wrap up of our 520 forum in today’s Morning Fizz,  (and Seattle Times transportation reporter Mike Lindblom covers the event here), but one great exchange didn’t get mentioned.

Audience member Damiana Merryweather—the local political junky who managed Ross Hunter’s King County Executive campaign and was a lobbyist for the UFCW—criticized Seattle City Council Member Mike O’Brien for his “let’s just build it and then figure out how it all works” approach (which O’Brien—all dreamy about light rail—copped to.)

Merryweather’s point: Our local transportation system is dysfunctional because it’s based on pet projects rather than a cohesive plan. She pointed out that years of coordinated study had gone into the current 520 plan and O’Brien’s preferred light rail had already been rejected.

Although O’Brien acknowledged that Merryweather had a point, he went on to reframe the debate.

He explained that his guiding principal wasn’t her dream, coherent transportation blueprint, but rather the mandates in state law to lower greenhouse gas emissions and reduce vehicle miles travelled (VMTs).

“The systemic problem that is more important to me,” he said, “the much bigger challenge is  how to address our transportation needs in the times of climate change. This is not bus vs. light rail. It’s—how does this piece fit into bigger picture  of VMT reduction?”

Rep. Deb Eddy (D-48)—who’s all for moving forward with the current plan—got the last word with her jaded take on state laws about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and VTM: “I have to tell you,” she joked (?), “we don’t put a lot of thought into that. Those goals are aspirational.”




  • http://twitter.com/fattailed fattailed

    You mis-identified Damiana Merryweather. As of late last year at least, she's the manager of artisan-libertarian West Seattle meat shop The Swinery:

    http://www.seattleweekly.com/2009-11-18/food/ha…

    Guess that what you get for doing such a bang-up job on the stirringly successful Ross Hunter campaign.

  • Damiana

    Actually fattailed, Josh got this right. My stint at the Swinery was temporary and is done.

  • http://www.seattletimes.com/ Mike Lindblom

    A look at recent history would have helped last night: A blue-ribbon panel (led by Norm Rice and John Stanton) suggested putting transit agencies and land-use planners, 128 governments in all, under one all-powerful board, including some directly elected members, to bring order to our chaos. There was even a state bill to do so. But Sound Transit, most greens, and even Rice and Stanton argued in 2007 against quick action, worried it would endanger the “Roads & Transit” measure for Sound Transit and highway expansion. It failed anyway, and Sound Transit's 15-year plan prevailed without roads in 2008. I suspect their instincts were correct — that to corral all our transportation fiefdoms would indeed set everybody's project back by five years. Then the public would be even more cheesed off about delays, than they are now.
    (We also have coverage of the 520 forum at seattletimes.com in “Politics Northwest”)

  • assjack

    Wow, I can think of some other state laws we ought to treat as “aspirational.”

  • KirklandGuy48

    One of the definitions of “aspirate” is “suck”. Yes, these things do suck.

  • http://twitter.com/fattailed fattailed

    Apologies & congrats on moving out of the dead meat business. Back into the dead-meat-candidate business?

  • Timothy

    The point only stands if you value the system more than the results, no? If we have a system that is unable to bring the results we want, it doesn't matter if they've been working on this for x number of years; what matters is what gets built and whether it works or doesn't work according to the desires of the public.

  • Geez!

    Can someone please use the red eye function on this photo of my friend Mike?

  • lisamaclean

    Merryweather raises the level of debate here — just as she did in the KCE race. Managing in a hotly contested race is a tough and often thankless job. The progressive community is fortunate for the talent and sacrifice of campaign staff like Damiana. Hopefully we'll get her back post meat stint.

  • debeddy

    Clarification: Some state laws are great ideas, and we generally rally around them … like the GHG goal. It's the IMPLEMENTATION that gets short shrift and requires a lot of work later on. We've set a goal for GHG reduction, yes, but how to make it happen is a different question. Read PSRC's work on how to get there (in support of recent growth strategy and transportation strategy updates) for clarification. It wasn't so much of a joke as an ironic observation.