I-776: This ugly stick will get Sound Transit's attention

Bruce Ramsey/Seattle Times editorial columnist

10/24/02

In Initiative 776, Tim Eyman is offering the voters of Puget Sound a
weapon to stop light rail. There is a case to be made for using it,
though it's an inelegant weapon, something like a two-by-four with
protruding nails.

Eyman's opponents say it is unfair that this weapon may be wielded by
voters in all 39 counties of the state, when light rail is an issue in
only three. It is unfair. But just because folks in Omak and Pysht can
vote about your taxes does not mean you should leave the decision to
them.

The choice now is not how to frame the vote - that's done - but how you
are going to vote on it. And it doesn't pay to complain overmuch about
statewide democracy, because on this issue there is no practical
alternative.

This is an important moment. I-776 is the last vote on light rail
before the laying of tracks. It is not a vote the agency wants. In the
thinking of light-rail supporters, that vote came and went in 1996.
Voters were in a romantic frame of mind, as they are today about
monorail, and light rail passed the second time it was offered.

Voters agreed to feed Sound Transit with an 0.4-percent sales tax and an
0.3-percent property tax on cars and trucks. That gives the agency an
income of several hundred millions a year, and will keep it fed until we
are much farther down the track with light rail.

Meanwhile, I-776. Phil Talmadge, the former state Supreme Court justice
who squeezed the Mariner stadium through the state constitution, decries
I-776 as "a blunt weapon." So it is. It would kill a $15 car-tab tax
in King, Pierce, Snohomish and Douglas counties, which would
unfortunately take out a lot of small road projects. More important is
that it would also take out Sound Transit's 0.3-percent Motor Vehicle
Excise Tax, which accounts for about 20 percent of its revenue.

Not all of that revenue is budgeted for light rail. Some goes to buses
and some to the commuter train. But however Sound Transit allocates it,
the loss of one-fifth of its revenue would be a financial and political
embarrassment. That alone might sink light rail, and if it did not, it
would hasten the day when Sound Transit had to go back to its voters to
ask for more money.

To force such an election is the best reason for Puget Sounders to vote
for I-776. It is a lot more important than having $30 tabs.

It is argued that I-776 would be an unconstitutional impairment of
contract. That is, Sound Transit promised the investors who bought its
$350 million in bonds that the 0.3-percent tax would remain "so long as
any bonds remain outstanding."

However, the disclosure document for the bonds says Sound Transit may
"defease" those bonds by setting aside the money to pay the interest and
principal. Then the bonds no longer would be considered outstanding.
Bondholders would be happy.

Sound Transit won't want to do that, and compliance would probably
require a court order. I-776, if it passes, will go to court anyway,
and the court will decide what actually happens.

Making such decisions is not up to the voters. Their job is to say what
they want. They did that with the first $30-tabs initiative, Eyman's
I-695. A court threw it out, but the Legislature then moved to repeal
the state property tax on cars, and Locke signed the repeal. Voters had
sent a message that they were sick of paying hundreds of dollars for car
tabs. The message was not welcome, but it was unmistakable, and
politicians listened. Eyman claims I-695 as a partial success, and he's
right.

Another argument, which I heard Monday from my dentist, is that light
rail is bad but that Eyman is worse - that he manipulates the system.
So he does.

But all sponsors of ballot measures do that. They write the law they
want, and they add just enough goodies to make it sell. Sound Transit's
sponsors wrote their law so that directors were appointed and that
voters had no right of initiative or referendum. The Monorail folks,
intending to look better than the uglies across the road, have added a
couple of elected directors, which is an attempt to put makeup on a
wart.

Such is democracy. At least once in a while it offers a two-by-four
studded with nails.