King County Superior Court Judge Laura Gene Middaugh just ruled that a referendum on a single portion of city legislation adopting three agreements on the deep-bore tunnel can go on the August ballot. Last Friday, Middaugh ruled that the majority of the legislation adopting the agreements was administrative, not legislative, and thus not subject to the referendum process.
Acknowledging that the issue before the voters is limited to whether the city council has the right to accept the agreements by notice, and that it “does not resolve the issue of whether or not there is going to be a bored tunnel,” Middaugh said that nonetheless, “The overriding goal is to make sure that the voices of the people are heard when a policy decision is made.”
“The people of the city of Seattle have the right to be involved in that process.”
However, Middaugh said, “No matter what happens today, this decision is not a referendum on whether we’re going to have a tunnel or not. … It is a decision about how you make that decision about whether we’re going to have a tunnel or not.”
The section of the ordinance Middaugh said can go on the ballot, known as Section 6, delegates authority to the city council to issue a notice to proceed on the tunnel after the final environmental impact statement is adopted.
Tunnel opponents characterized the ruling as a victory for proponents of a vote on the tunnel itself. “What’s most important is that the people be heard, and that’s what [Middaugh] said today,” said Drew Paxton, spokesman for Protect Seattle Now. “This is about whether the people of Seattle support the tunnel.”
Tunnel proponents, in contrast, argued that any vote would be on a minor process issue, not on the tunnel itself.
Paul Lawrence, one of the attorneys for Let’s Move Forward, the pro-tunnel group, said “no decision has been made” about whether to file an appeal. Assuming an appeals court doesn’t immediately issue a stay, keeping the measure off the ballot, the city council will have to put it on the ballot Monday.
Assuming that happens, the pro-tunnel camp has until about the end of June to file an appeal—the time when the ballots are printed. A successful appeal would remove the measure from the ballot.
The city council could still potentially put a competing measure on the ballot alongside the referendum on Section 6, including the surface/transit option—which, like the tunnel, does not enjoy majority support in the city, according to numerous polls.
