The Seattle Times discovered that Mayor Mike McGinn was hiding a report on the impacts of coal trains. It should be no surprise that McGinn is against bringing more jobs into the region or that he hid the results from the public when he didn’t like the facts. According to the Seattle Times, Lauri Hennessy, spokeswoman for the Alliance for Northwest Jobs & Exports said, “He was clearly not eager to release this report. He asked for this report, he didn’t like what this report said, so he just put it away.”
So how much did this report that McGinn ask for cost the taxpayers? $25,000.
What was so damaging in the report that would cause McGinn to hide it? The report says that the terminal could export up to 48 million tons of a coal a year to Asia. One union leader says that if the people waging the war on jobs had their way, Washington state would never see the economic benefit. The report says that the coal export terminal would bring hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity to the state.
