Watch Tonight’s PubliCola Tunnel Debate Live

Will do – can’t be there, so this is great. Any truth to the Slog report that you guys had wanted WSDOT for a panelist but they refused you?

Good question, Gloomy Gus.

We asked WSDOT, and they said they’d join the panel on stage to present an overview of the project and answer any factual questions, but they felt it wasn’t appropriate for any of their staffers to be part of a political debate.

We didn’t want to waste a seat on a panelist that wasn’t up for debating, so we turned down that idea—which we felt okay about because we already had a state representative, state Sen. Ed Murray, the sponsor of the state tunnel legislation.

It also gave us the opportunity to add another pro-tunnel perspective, King County Labor Council labor leader, David Freiboth.

Thanks for the reply, Josh. Looking forward to seeing the result of all the careful planning Publicola’s done.

Tsk, tsk, Flash video? The mayor’s iPhone toting staff are miss out

For some strange reason Publicola’s front page on my iPad will not display anything past Tuesday. iPhone, Mac, Safari, Firefox, Windoz IE are not having that problem.

How about asking the mayor if he is having a problem with his iPad when he compulsively checks Publicola.

Cleared cache, cookies, closed all browsers, nothing. The rss feed works fine.

Mike Obrien just nailed it!

safety net VS Cars

As a tunnel supporter I have to say that Mayor McGinn is my best friend. He is such an arrogant, bombastic guy. Mike O’Brien on the other hand is my worst nightmare because he is much more rational and congenial.

Also, Senator Murray and Secretary Freiboth are ON FIRE!!!!

Cary Moon is also very thoughtful. If I was an anti tunneler I would have her and O’Brien do the talking and have McGinn STFU!

He should quit the city council, run for state legislature and go change the state constitution to allow the gas tax to be dumped into the state general fund.
Otherwise, what he nailed was a sign that says “incompetent” on his forehead.

McGinn’s answer for funding for the surface+transit option is that the legislature will change their minds and fund it.
Murray says there is no funding plan for I-5 portion, hasn’t been an acceptable option so far.
Will the city then fund the I-5 part? Legislature isn’t going to.
The legislature will not pay for more buses, they may grant us the ability to vote for a higher tax on ourselves, so the legislature will not fund that portion, either.
What is left of the Surface+transit option that the state would actually pay for.
Pretending that they will pay for that stuff while a legislator is sitting right there telling you that the state will not isn’t a viable option.

The traffic will be going under or over.

My position of what is possible, as my personal stalker Joe can attest, is that other surface improvements actually could be possible if we can get the state’s plan for its road moving foreword.

McGinn talks a lot about listening. The state is saying no to the surface option by itself, the I-5 portion in any option. Not having those I-5 “improvements” makes the Surface+Transit option wanting some other thing that would move traffic some other way, hmmm, since it can’t be on the surface where would that traffic go, hmmm, up or down, pick one.

Go up or down, still need to make grid improvements, still need the legislature to let Seattle tax themselves for mass transit. If McGinn were really interested in west side LR, he could have leveraged that SDEIS into an MVET to fund west side LR, or at least more rapid ride buses.
Either/or thinking gets you either or results.
Oh well, maybe the next mayor.

The audio quality was horrible.

wait, so anyone who criticizes the 18th amendment and DOESN’T run for state office with the intent of changing it is also incompetent?

What kind of tax for Mass Transit do you think the mayor should get permission for?

A property tax? Sales tax? Motor Vehicle Excise Tax? Parking Tax? Gas tax? Something else?

What’s this “get permission” for business? He’s on the Sound Transit board. He’s the executive of the largest city in the state. If he wasn’t such an arrogant putz he could actually build a coalition, make deals, and deliver something people would love.

As MrBaker put it — and in a way I hadn’t thought of before — he could actually get partial funding for west side light rail or other transit by calling it mitigation. The state could refuse, but it’s at least something worth trying!

Raise the limit of the MVET
Raise the tire disposal fee from the 5 or 7 bucks it is now to 15 or 20, and let locals keep the tax for transportation funding.
Gas tax is, indeed, dying. Tomorrow the Leaf shows up, the first day of dead tax walking.
Broader tolling, the Leaf will pay no gas tax.
Regulate and meter recharging stations at homes that pull more than 110, split that between city light that has to support that infrastructure and SDOT that also has to support that infrastructure. Equivalent pricing right now has cars like the leaf getting 90 miles for the gallon of electrons. They can give up 10% of that in tax.

The path McGinn has chosen is one where his odds are not any better fighting it or not, so he is not gaining much for his effort. He could still fight this in a much smarter way be insisting on tunnel mitigation that could enable him to actually make good on campaign promises, but he appears to want to stand over Rasmussen and blow hot gas. He could make so many demands for mitigation that it actually sinks the whole project.
It may be a little late for that, and I just don’t think he is too bright.
I think he could have parlayed this situation into a variety of taxing strategies authorized by the state, had he resisted the urge to be a jackass.
Too bad for us.

Yeah, except it takes a 2/3rds vote to raise taxes now and there won’t be enough Leafs on the road worth any weight in tax for years.

If you moved the goal posts on the mayor any further, he’d be running plays backward.

Um, you have to get permission to raise taxes. 40% of the legislature is automatically against tax increases, that kills it on the spot.

Um, you have to get permission to raise taxes. 40% of the legislature is automatically against tax increases, that kills it on the spot.

They were there.

Hey, where were you seated? I didn’t see you.

Don’t let Mr Baker get to you — the only people more obsessed with the mayor than he is are the [straight-]bear lovers.

The state would not refuse, the state has been working for more than a year on studying what to do for mass transit funding, and the obvious and inevitable decline of gas tax revenue.

The “evil” Paula Hammond said it at the end of the last special council meeting on this subject, Tom Rasmussen asked about transit funding, (paraphrasing) she advised that the city get its shit together now (2 months ago) and be ready to approach the legislature early because this will be a big year for transit legislation.

The nutty thing is that you do not have to agree with what they are saying, but you should at least believe it.
McGinn’s position for the past 14 months has been that the state legislature will just change their minds and rally around the Surface option. Well, they are not. He was told straight up the the I-5 portion of that idea has been dead since 2003. Where do those cars go now?
Politically, as Murray said, it is a non-starter.
Make lemonade.

The legislature is going to stonewall on transit regardless of who it’s for, you know that. Whatcom can get no more money from the state on transit than Spokane can. Seattle Transit Blog has covered this lack of concern for transit statewide for years, including Gregoire’s vetoes of transit-helpful legislation.

Pretending that if we do what they want they’ll work for us is wishful thinking.

So, tell me how he passes the transit portion of the surface option?
McGinn sidestepped that tonight.

Either the legislature is supporting transit, or it isn’t. It isn’t only supporting transit just for the mayor’s favorite option. I know the mayor makes his argument in a way where the legislature is one way with the transit component for the tunnel plan, and the opposite way for his surface option, but that doesn’t mean you have to believe that bullshit. He can’t have it both ways, not with the state legislature.

King county, and Seattle, are not the only places in this state with major funding issues for mass transit. Snohomish county just rolled out Swift, embraced the Orca card, built infrastructure and are chopping ridership hours.

The city’s taxing authority comes from the state. Given this legal context, I put the question to you: what kind of deal should McGinn cut?

Is Mike McGinn capable of getting a 2/3 vote in the legislature for the transit portion of his Surface option, or not?
Your argument also works against him, worse, he has to stop the tunnel plan that has already been passed in the legislature and get a 2/3 vote for a new bill for the Surface option. I just don’t think he could get even the surface option (not including the transit). Nope, you would get choppaduct, and gas taxes moving to 520, and east of the mountains. I know we like to think that is all our money, but you lose that hold on it by doing nothing with it.
At least with an existing tunnel plan already in place he could have (past tense intended) leveraged the risk of losing that to convince enough state legislatures that municipalities need the power and ability to fund local transit projects with locally generated taxes.

How does that help the argument for the Surface option?

Mr Baker, you couch this in a single-person against an entire establishment — it’s not. The room was tipped slightly against the tunnel, if it were a live tallied vote, the room would have rejected the tunnel by a slight margin. There is actual opposition to the tunnel — it’s live, it’s there. What you’re doing, however, is playing this cute little propagandistic scapegoat game by forcing all opposition to the tunnel onto McGinn.

As to the rest of your point, it makes absolutely no sense. You proposed taxes, I said they won’t happen. You replied by saying the whole enabling bill, which used existing and approved collected taxes, would need to be ratified with a 2/3rds margin — that’s a lie, the taxes are already being collected there’s no need to vote for them again. And we’ve been on this kick about locally funding transit. Eyman stopped it once and Gregoire, even pre-McGinn, has already vetoed a handful of bills that would have given us more control over our transit future.

There is no transit in the current option, Mr Baker. Even at the highest level of mitigation, the transit offered is existing service hours moved from one point to another. It’s not an increase in service at all and is only for construction. We have no transit plan with this tunnel. If one option was surface PLUS transit, this is tunnel MINUS transit.

What the Mayor proposed was something that Senator Murray and Councilmember Rasmussen told me direct to my face, the legislature and city (meaning the Mayor and Council, together) need to work together on getting transit funding, but the legislature isn’t going to budge. And that’s independent of who’s in charge in Seattle (Nickels couldn’t do it, Rice couldn’t do it, hell — not even Royer could do it). They’ve managed to separate out the transit issue. You, on the other hand, seem to treat it like a hostage for lack of understanding and abuse of the lack of understanding that others have.

The Governor already promised to raise the MVET limit in the original deal and went back on her word.

I agree there are different revenue sources that the city should explore together with the state to fund local mass transit. Somehow this has turned into a blunt instrument with which to claim that it’s McGinn (who has been in office about a year) who’s at fault for us not doing these things. The city council and members of the state legislature have agency, they can go ahead and take these steps on their own.

He should be insisting on construction starting contingent on new transportation funding mechanisms (a bill passed), the state would insist that the project moves ahead prior to the city voting. Give the city as long as they want, as many tries as they want, and make that the cities problem.
He should target a potential amount of revenue that would cover west side light rail. He has no chance of actually passing that vote citywide by 2/3, but a lot of other transit stuff could get funded.

This is pointless, he is wishing upon a star that 2/3 of the legislature will vote for a Surface option bill, that is his political base. Giving up on the tunnel is the end of bothering to run for re-election.
It isn’t as if he can hop back over that fence again.

Criticized, no problem with that, he appeared to be “intellectually dishonest” by conflating the gas tax and general fund to present a false choice to achieve some moral high ground.

He doesn’t want to live in a world like this. Ok, then go do something about it where that issue can actually get changed.
He was complaining, not solving.

Alexjon, if that room was full of legislators you would have a point.

As was pointed out in the debate, while under the 18th amendment funds cannot be used for social spending, any potential cost overruns would likely not be paid for out of 18th amendment funds but rather from other revenue sources. I do think there was a lot of confusion on this point in the debate, and the refusal of either side to actually use the term “18th amendment” and explain what is, was to me quite bizarre.

That said, talking about this problem in a public forum seems to me like one of the first steps towards changing the law. I don’t see where the outrage comes from that Mike O’Brien, Seattle city council member for one year, hasn’t sufficiently devoted himself to amending the state constitution. Ed Murray said that he thought the Federal stimulus wasn’t big enough. Does that mean Ed is remiss if he’s not campaigning for the US congress and trying to get more stimulus? This is a very high standard to hold people to…

If the legislature passed McGinn’s surface option without the transit portion, and the process would take a couple years (more SDEIS, elevated petitions and court action, etc), would McGinn be making the same argument about going back to the legislature to get that transit funding as Murray and Rasmussen are right now.

The debate on the House floor was that Seattle would be back again for transit funding (that would be now).
McGinn can’t do that overtly since it helps mitigate the criticism he has about the current tunnel situation.
Will he actively hurt the city’s effort to get transit funding this year since it would help the tunnel plan, and then come back next year and hope to get the surface option and the transit funding?
I think that is the scenario he is laying out by bringing up the Roads and Transit vote (sorry South Park Bridge).
He is McSandbag.

1053.

In front of my tv, streaming it over the ps3 (it has a web browser), drinking beer.
I did not see much point in being there since there would not be a meaningful discussion about all of the options. McGinn and OBrien have the exact same worded response when asked about I-101, “they haven’t read it yet”. OBrien reads the SDEIS but not an initiative that already has 16,000 signatures?
Bullshit.

It is either under or over.

Well, Alex, as a matter of fact Mr. Murray has said (KUOW a couple months ago) that if Seattle could get its act together that he would be interested in lobbying for federal help. That me be a long shot, but he is in a position to not just complain about it, but try to do something about it.

You really do have to have a plan before you ask the Feds for money. If it looks like the mayor is trying to kill the project then it kind of puts doubt in some peoples minds.

Even if it “takes a couple of years” to do the I5/Surface/Transit option then that has it completed in 2013, 2-3 years before the tunnel would be completed.

Also, why is the city council and the legislature not passing more transit funding somehow McGinn’s fault? The fundamental flaw in your analysis is that it places great emphasis on what McGinn is or is not doing while ignoring that as mayor his power is limited and that other people with power have agency in this process.

Alex, my point is is that he can’t both be powerful enough to get 2/3 vote on Surface+I-5+Transit over the objections of the legislature, and not powerful enough to influence Seattle’s ability to get +Transit funding.
I am just saying he can’t have it both ways.
Is he powerful, or powerless? Pick one, don’t care which.
Now apply that same criteria when analyzing either option.

Ok, I’m wrong, he does not have power to influence the city’s ability to get +Transit legislation passed. He would then not have the power to get the Surface+Transit passed.

Or, I’m right and he does have enough power and he is killing our chances this year for transit.

Well, this is where I get off, something is true or not, not both.

Wow I never knew what a bunch of whiny idiots that whole Sierra Club pack was. It is scary that one of them is charged with running our city.

Ed Murray didn’t quite connect the dots, but the point is there that we don’t know what federal funding opportunities we’re missing out on because we don’t have a cohesive front.

If there’s a stimulus II Seattle may well be passed over yet again. If you were an investor, would you give money to a project with as much manufactured uncertainty?

this was a very illuminating comment. Made an assertion, offered facts, did a bit of objective analysis, and enlightened us all.

Makes me miss Nickles