After the state Supreme Court upheld the initiative that takes motor-vehicle excise tax money from Sound Transit, the agency showed its defiance for the law in two ways:
Sound Transit officials said they would continue to collect the tax for 25 years, citing a duty to honor bond contracts but ignoring the facts that other taxes bring in four times as much money and that the agency already has enough money to pay off the bonds.
This puts the public officials who serve on the board in the position of ignoring their duty to follow and uphold our constitution and laws. Their defiance reminds me of George Wallace’s defying court orders to integrate the University of Alabama more than 40 years ago.
It’s time to circulate recall positions against King County Executive Ron Sims, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and other city and county officials on the Board.
Then, the Board members put on a ceremonial groundbreaking for the 14-mile Seattle-Tukwila light-rail line Saturday, when they were joined by Sen. Patty Murray, who has failed to protect taxpayers from this useless project. In 1992 and ‘98, I voted for a Mom in Tennis Shoes, but now that she’s become another bring-home-the-bacon politician, willing to raid the federal treasury for any local project, I don’t know if I can support her again. As I wrote this, I heard commercials extolling Murray’s support for Medicare prescription benefits. I support this; so I’m torn, but I do want next year’s election to bring debate on money for light rail.
What now for Sound Transit?
Now that the Court has upheld the constitutionality of Initiative 776, here’s what Sound Transit should do:
1) Drop the light-rail project which seems destined never to get to the Airport, or north to Capitol Hill, the University of Washington or Northgate, much less to Everett or Tacoma. Consider the Tacoma line a light-rail accomplishment and work for a Seattle-area one that actually goes somewhere, like on an enhanced Mercer Island floating bridge.
2) Put more of your time, money and effort into providing complete commuter-rail service from Lakewood (south of Tacoma) to Tacoma, Puyallup, Auburn, Seattle’s King Street Station, new stops in north Seattle and Richmond Beach, Edmonds, Mukilteo, Everett and north at least to Marysville, with trains running regularly both ways daily from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. This means adequate park &ride lots at all of those stations.
3) Put more of your time, money and effort into coordinating bus service among the three counties. Find ways to travel, for example, between King and Snohomish counties without having to change buses at the Aurora Village Transit Center. This is particularly important to paratransit users. As a disabled person, I get rides from my Richmond Beach home to anywhere in the Seattle area on Access Transit, but to go to a place a mile away in Edmonds or Woodway, I need to ride the Access bus two miles to the transit center, wait a half hour for the DART bus and travel two more miles to my destination only a mile from home. I’m sure that people in Federal Way and Fife have the same problem transfering from Metro to Pierce Transit. Sound Transit, as a three-county agency, can address those problems.
4) Put time, money and effort into working with the Seattle Popular Monorail Authority and the group pushing a suburban monorail to coordinate your train and bus service with the planned monorails.
5) Take land you’re preparing for the light-rail line to build dedicated bus lanes for bus rapid transit through Rainier Valley. These buses can travel on tracks in narrow lanes, then take people onto established streets.
6) Work with those of us who want to make the Sound Transit Board a truly democratic entity, with members elected by popular vote in Snohomish County, North King County, South King County, East King County and Pierce County.
Voters have spoken
We don’t yet get to vote on Sound Transit Board members, but King and Snohomish counties gave the Board negative reviews in recent elections. King County Councilwoman and ST Board Member Cynthia Sullivan lost in the primary to Bob Ferguson, who had made light rail an issue, Edmonds City Councilman and ST Board Member Dave Earling trailed in his race for Snohomish County executive, King County Councilman and former ST Board Member Rob McKenna, who had opposed light rail, won re-election, and light-rail opponent Maggie Fimia won election to the Shoreline City Council.
An initiative run amok
The sponsors of Initiative 841, which passed last week, may have had some valid points. Some small employers probably found the workplace ergonomics rules burdensome. But that should mean working through the legislative and administrative process to get them changed, not throwing them all out and forbidding any more.
Now, it’s up to the Legislature to come up with some compromise laws to protect workers, like those who sit at keyboards all day, from repetitive stress injuries.
The initiative may also be challenged on the single-subject rule because it both throws out the rules and forbids new ones.
Election calls too personal
“Hello,” I said into the telephone.
At the other end was a recorded message, “This is Representative Maralyn Chase urging you to vote for these three candidates …”
That call came only once, but there were five urging me to vote one way or the other on I-841.
So, imagine my thrill that a real person called to ask me to vote for a particular city council candidate. I told her I was happy to talk to a real person, we had a polite chat about local issues and she urged me to be sure to vote.
Almost as pleasant was a call from Seattle Port Commission incumbent Clare Nordquist that started, “I’m sorry to have to resort to a recorded message, but …” That approach is less likely to lose my support than most.
Evan Smith is Enterprise Forum editor. Send comments to entopinion@heraldnet.com
Remembering Dee Andros
Former Oregon State football coach Dee Andros, who died three weeks ago, was known as “The Great Pumpkin” because he would dress his rotund body in OSU orange as he led the team onto the field, but he also was known for his wit; some examples:
On his Greek heritage (he was born Demosthenes Konstandies Andrecopoulos) in his playing days at Oklahoma— “I was named All-Greek. There were 12 Greeks playing, and I beat one out.”
After his 1967 OSU team’s defeat of O.J. Simpson and his Southern Cal teammates on a wet Corvallis field led to a rule that all teams have tarps for their fields – “We have a tarp, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to use it.”
When he called a University of Oregon assistant coach, who became the new head coach, and the receptionist asked the spelling of his name – “Spell it 45 to 7,” the score by which his team had beaten Oregon the previous fall.
When he lost weight following open-heart surgery— “Maybe now they’ll call me ‘The Little Squash.’ “
More on freedom of religion
Two weeks ago, I mentioned that the U.S. Supreme Court faces two important decisions this year on freedom of religion. One was a case from our state. on whether a student can study theology. The right to free exercise of religion means that he has this right.
Pledge is unconstitutional
The other case comes from California.
The Court will review a decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that forcing students to say the Pledge of Allegiance constitutes “establishment of religion” because the pledge includes the phrase “under God,” added by Congress in the 1950s to distinguish our country from the “Godless Communists.”
Which way the Court will rule on this is up for grabs, but certainly there’s no fairness in using the pressure of a classroom to make a student recite these words.
We tell people who want school prayer that they can pray with their children in their homes and churches; if they want to pledge allegiance to a nation “under God,” let them do that at home.
Only a few came marching
Saturday, Nov. 1, was observed on many church calendars as All Saints’ Day, but it was a bad day for saints on American college football fields.
St. Augustine’s, St. John Fisher, St. Joseph’s of Indiana, St. Mary of Kansas, St. Mary’s of California, St. Olaf, St. Tanka-Huron and Mount St. Joseph all lost.
St. Anselm, St. Francis and St. Norbert won their games to make the record 3-8.
Maybe the record should be 4-9 because St. John’s beat St. Thomas in an all-Minnesota-saints game.
More important business
A U.S. Senate committee held a hearing two weeks ago to express anger at the college football Bowl Championship Series.
What a waste of time.
The system has lots of problems, but Congress should leave it to those who run college sports and spend its time on important issues like national security, the economy, health care and education.
Ashamed to be Duck
I have always looked back fondly on my time at the University of Oregon. While there, I studied under some outstanding professors, a half dozen of whom wrote books that I later used when I became a professor myself; I ran with seven Olympic athletes; and I established friendships that have lasted decades.
Mostly, I remember Eugene as the mellow town where jogging got its start, where a 15-mile run could turn into a philosophical discussion and, yes, where authorities were tolerant of my fellow students who used marijuana.
Imagine my disgust in watching the Oregon football team play on television in recent weeks. Autzen Stadium has luxury boxes and lockers with individual climate control and video screens, and the teams wear gaudy uniforms.
That shouldn’t be Oregon. It should be Nebraska or Alabama.
I was proud of the campus where I changed into an ugly gray sweat suit in a dusty locker room under the grandstand. I’m ashamed of what it has become..
“Liberal bias”
A writer last week said I shouldn’t be afraid to declare a party preference to vote in a primary because I was obviously a liberal Democrat.
I had said that I didn’t like declaring a party preference when I was a political reporter in the 1970s. Now, as a commentator, I want to be free to criticize both Republicans and Democrats.
I admit to being liberal, but I believe that no political party is always right.
Religious protection
A reader took issue with my statement that our constitutional provisions against establishment of religion prohibits the display of the Ten Commandments on public property. The writer correctly says that the purpose of the establishment clause was to protect us from having an established church.
The Congregationalists in Massachusetts, the Quakers in Pennsylvania and the Catholics in Maryland had come to escape persecution from the Church of England; the Huguenots came to New York to escape the French Catholic Church; and the Baptists went.to Rhode Island to escape the Congregationalists in Massachusetts.
In the last two centuries, however, our nation has become more religiously diverse, and we have relied on the establishment clause to protect all kinds of believers and non-believers from all religion.
Evan Smith is the Enterprise Forum editor.
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