Last week, Sound Transit floated a $15 billion plan to expand “mostly” rail service. The transit agency’s Sound Transit 3 (ST3) package would require “a new property tax, higher sales taxes, car-tab taxes, some combination, or other sources.” In exchange, Sound Transit Finance Director Brian McCarton assured the taxpaying public that the agency “could bring rail to most but not all of the marquee destinations on agency maps and the public’s mind at neighborhood forums…”
That’s right, for a whopping $15 billion dollars taxpayers get a promise that Sound Transit “could” bring rail to “most but not all” marquee locations. What a great deal… right – especially since, based on experience, with Sound Transit the price will always go up and the services will go down.
According to the Seattle Times, Sound Transit “already collects the maximum sales tax and car-tab tax allowed under state law for its first two phases of rail and bus projects”—Sound Transit 1 and 2 (ST1 and ST2). In order to fund ST3, the agency “needs another act of the Legislature to ask the voters in urban areas of Snohomish, King and Pierce counties for more.”
Agency officials will begin pushing the Legislature for a higher tax limit this legislative cycle in hopes of getting ST3 on the ballot by 2016.
Sound Transit Board Chairman and King County Executive Dow Constantine commented on the possibility saying, “There is a growing excitement about a potential Sound Transit ballot measure in 2016. We have a lot of work to do.”
An interesting statement considering that it’s not often the public gets excited about voting for a $15 billion spending package courtesy of a government agency that has repeatedly violated voter trust without any accountability. You see, Sound Transit does not have a great track record of keeping its promises to voters—in fact, its record is terrible.
Most recently, in 2010, Sound Transit asked voters to approve its second expansion package, ST2. Transit officials promised voters that, in return for a sales tax hike, the “expanded rail portion (137 miles of light rail and commuter rail) would carry 310,000 passenger trips per day by 2030.” Fast forward just two years later and officials revised their promise, estimating that the rail would only “carry about 164,000 trips per day.” To be clear, that’s about half of what was originally promised to voters.
In the end, Sound Transit got to keep its higher tax authority without being accountable for breaking its promise to voters (agency officials are appointed rather than elected to their positions). Win, win for Sound Transit, huge loss for taxpayers. We wish that’s the only time Sound Transit has violated the public’s trust, but it’s not. It’s really, really not.
Yet, Sound Transit officials and their Democrat supporters now want to ask the public for more taxes to start new construction projects before current projects are even completed—not to mention old promises kept. There’s no other explanation for the audacity other than transit officials seem to be banking on hopes that legislators in Olympia and Snohomish, King and Pierce county voters suffer from both long and short term memory loss. That, or their project to groom kids as young as five years old to favor, and someday vote for, buses and trains will reach the first wave of fruition by 2016.
But just in case those precocious kids are not quite ready to vote for taxing themselves perpetuity, Constantine has hired a new lobbying team so he can better use public money to lobby other public officials to take more money from the public.
That’s what Democrats call a win-win-win situation.
Sound Transit’s money comes from taxpayers who have voted to provide it, after acts enabling those votes have been passed by our legislature. Perhaps a K-12 schoolchild could explain to you why taxation with representation is a core American value?
Remember, you guys can lose and lose and lose at the polls, and democracy can still be working just fine. It just means voters do not believe what you’re telling them.
But since accountability and results are incredibly important to you, how about telling us the budget for this site, who provides it, and whether it not the recent election results show the “Shift” in “WA” your contributors wanted? All of your efforts resulted in no change in our legislature, no change in who we send to Congress, and the historic passage of I-594. Did these results satisfy your metrics? Or is this site just a complete waste of money, effort, and time?
Ask a voter in…oh…Carnation if they think their tax dollars for this bullcrap are being represented on their behalf. I can give you the answer: A resounding NO! Ask a voter anywhere other than Bellevue, Everett, or Seattle and you’ll hear the same thing. People are tired of paying for services they can’t and most likely NEVER WILL use. What part of THAT don’t YOU get?
Through the state government, taxpayers in Bellevue and Seattle pay for roads in Eastern Washington that we “can’t and most likely NEVER WILL use.” That’s part of living in King County, where a taxpayer who sends $1 in taxes to Olympia receives less than $1 in services from the state government; in Eastern Washington, a taxpayer receives more than $1 in services from Olympia for each dollar paid in state taxes. If I have a problem with this arrangement, I can file an Initiative, or I can contact my state representatives, one of whom just so happens to be Speaker of the House.
The entire point of this post — and of your whine — is that taxpayers are voting to pay taxes after their representatives in Olympia have authorized the vote. That’s how democracy works. You’re demanding the majority of us taxpayers be denied what we have voted to do, because you say some person in Carnation or wherever was on the losing side of that vote. That’s called a tyranny of the minority.
Want to SHIFT the debate in WA? Try winning a majority. Until then, you can amuse us with your impotent whining.
You make a good point of no retrurn on tax dollars . Do you feel thesameway on the federal level ? Ifsome agencies were abolished ,federal taxes would godown,giving the dollars back to taxpayers. Also the decision making back tolocal school boards,and states for energy,business,health care,marriage .
I wasn’t claiming Seattle saw no benefit from building and maintaining roads in Eastern Washington, just that it’s unlikely anyone residing in Seattle will ever directly use those roads. My larger point was that we liberals frequently receive self-righteous lectures from conservatives about our supposed wasting of tax money, but when the government acts as a mechanism to transfer tax dollars from liberal regions to conservative ones, the benefits which conservatives derive from liberals’ tax dollars are never, ever described as wasteful or unnecessary.
My position on most social programs are they need to be scaled back to their original intent. That being a safety net,not a total support system. Drug testing,bwfore ,any benefit is paid. if positive 60 days for rehab and be tested and clean.
Food stamps only for certain foods,not potatoe chips,fast fod restaurant or conveinence stores. There by getting more food for the dollar. These are taxpayer dollars ,not earned personal dollars.
Gas tax dollars need to be used as best possible to serve all. Obviously that boon doggle of a tunnel does not qualify. Having a project that cuts lanes of traffic ,and charges a toll to go no place is not going to be used by most comuters. So it will never be self sustaining .
Seattle and King County have their own taxing authority to spend as they wish. But no Federal or State dollars should be going to social programs that benefit illegals.
Obviously that boon doggle of a tunnel does not qualify…
The tunnel is part of State Route 99, and so should be improved, operated, and maintained by the state.
“Seattle and King County have their own taxing authority to spend as they wish.”
Yes, taxpayers in Seattle and King County should pay taxes to Olympia for state highways we’ll never use in far Eastern Washington, but if we want to improve traffic flow through State Route 99 here in Seattle, we should pay for it ourselves. Thanks for demonstrating my point exactly.
You guys have no problem with taxes and government benefits — so long as you pay none of the taxes and receive all of the benefits you like. Any wonder why the majority of voters won’t listen to you?
How many lanes in each direction are currently on the viaduct ? How many in each direction for tunnel ? The current structure is at capacity and they are building a road smaller than currently used. Thenl
So? That simply means fewer bottlenecks at either end.
The main economic value from that stretch of SR-99 comes from providing an overland route from Harbor Island to the Ballard waterfront. Eliminating the access points in downtown Seattle will improve traffic flow between those two working waterfronts. That’s the main reason for the narrower footprint; without the downtown traffic, SR-99 will flow better.
My only question to you would be why use the term “whining”..Reading your post seems to indicate that you enjoy a good argument but then turn a conservative argument into whining??? If conservatives whine does it not also imply that liberals whine??? It is the listener who defines who is whining and it seems when you listen to a conservative you hear whining??? So where do we come together for the compromise most liberals call for? Where is the middle ground?
I called it “whining” because he was complaining about the results of our free and fair elections. The legislature authorized the vote for Sound Transit, and we the voters then gave the tax a majority of our votes. If either vote had failed, the tax would not have been levied. I think it’s funny that here, where so many of the recent posts have celebrated election results, we get someone who just loudly rejects any tax he does not like, no matter how legitimate the basis for it.
seattle and its queers and commy poilitician SUCK!
The Republicans won an outright majority in the Senate for the first time since 1977 and also reduced the Democrat majority in the House. That doesn’t really sound like “no change in our legislature” It’s Shift WA, not Shift Capitol Hill Liberals
Republicans held a majority of Senate seats (26 to the Democrats’ 23) in the 1997 – 1998 session. Thanks for playing.
One big difference between the current Senate and the next one is that Sen. Miloscia (Federal Way) is currently serving in his seventh term as a Democrat for his district. Come January, he will serve that district again, but as a Republican, since he chose to switch parties earlier this year. If you want to argue that the same voters, voting for the same person in the same district, makes for a Shift, please go right ahead.
Our state Senate is controlled by Republicans now, and it will be controlled by Republicans next year. The only difference seems to be they will be honest about it. Now that’s a welcome Shift! 🙂
If it keeps going like this, we can either just move, commit suicide, or become indentured servants…
DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO TURN SEATTLE INTO THE WEST COAST VERSION OF DETROIT!
That’s fine. As long as Seattle residents pay for this they can do all the social experimentation they want, but don’t expect the rest of us to pitch in, we went through that BS already with roads and bridges.
This will not help….we are already hiked on taxes…stop this madness….use your voice, vote these people out of office, before it is too late…
The problem with transportation funding is that we are all in together or we are separate groups getting no where fast. The argument against further taxation should be based on the massive waste not necessarily the project itself. Making improvement in transportation should be based on the end game not on the short term economic gain. How will a project help us in the future not right now with increased jobs or the purchase of materials for the project? The four major cities in WA state are the center for all spending. Their vote outstrips the rest of the state and we have little affect on how our dollars are spent. The republican majority in the state senate is limited by who joins them in stopping a bad bill, and it can change with one person changing sides. Thats politics, and democracy, one vote, is our way.