Archives for January 2010

The 520 bridge replacement project is more than another transportation project.

It is an opportunity to build healthy places to live, work, and play that our region won’t see again for at least another half century.

It is an opportunity to be good stewards of the environment and to address climate change.

It is an opportunity for our many local communities to come together and act as a region.

It is an opportunity for us to determine what kind of city we want and the quality of life of our neighborhoods.

It is an opportunity for our state to offer a vision of transportation for the 21^st Century and not just building roads like its 1959.

Finally it is again an opportunity to move our transportation system forward.

It will take leadership to bring together all the many points of view on how to best move forward on transportation. But we have done it before.

During my time as Chair of the House Transportation Committee, working with my Republican and Democratic counterparts in both the House and the Senate, we passed fourteen and half cents in gas taxes by bringing road and transit advocates from the east and west side together.

(I point out the fact that I worked to pass the largest financing package for roads in our state’s history only to preempt the pigeonholing of my perspective here as that of another Seattle Democrat transit advocate.)

It will take leadership from the environmental community to get transit right. Transportation remains the single largest contributor to global warming in Washington State – over half our greenhouse emissions come from vehicles. The 520 bridge project offers a real opportunity to build a transportation structure of the future that contributes to the solution.

Neither the legislation authorizing the new 520 bridge, nor any of the current designs, integrate transit into the design or planning of the project. Nor is there any financing mechanism for new transit in the corridor, particularly for high capacity transit. The name alone — “The 520 Bridge and HOV Replacement Project” – is proof that again we are building a road to move cars, and not a transportation corridor to move people and goods. The current plan amounts to placing existing buses onto new HOV lanes to share with cars. Glaringly, it lacks a streamlined connection for transit riders between the north/south transit corridor at new Sound Transit Station at Montlake and any future transit riders moving east/west from the new 520.

It will take leadership from the City to bring neighborhoods that currently disagree amongst themselves together. Far more people live and work near the 520 bridges then the Viaduct. The City should use the model it developed during the creation of urban villages to approach the project in a comprehensive manner. It should put the Departments of Planning, Neighborhoods, and Transportation on the ground and bring together neighborhoods that are currently divided, creating an all-neighborhoods comprehensive mitigation and transportation plan. It is impossible for the Seattle legislators to support a city position when one is lacking.

It will take leadership on the part of the county to bring urban and suburban interests together. The county with the new leadership of Dow Constantine from Seattle and Fred Jarrett from the east side of Lake Washington is uniquely positioned to bring both sides of the lake together and act as a region. The state should consider allowing the County to assume all coordination for planning and financing for a new 520 and I-90 corridor transportation authority.

It will take leadership in the Legislature to address the fact that the current financial plan is unattainable. During the negotiations to pass the nine-and-a-half-cent gas tax east of the lake, legislators insisted on moving $1.5 billion out of 520 and applying it to I-405. Now we have a shortfall. The solution is to toll I-90 in addition to 520, and committing toll revenues to the construction, maintenance and operations of the bridge and of transit.

If we fail to come together as a region on a project that is crucial to our economic future, I believe we will destroy the coalition that moved our transportation system forward and return again to the defeats we suffered in years past.

We have succeeded in the past and we can do it again. Let’s capitalize on the many unique opportunities we face. Let’s move our transportation system forward.

— Sen. Ed Murray

U.S. House Republican Whip Eric Cantor has sent out a memo naming the 37 Dems who voted for the House health care reform bill, but who he believes can be persuaded to vote against final passage. And our very own Rep. Adam Smith (WA-9) is listed amongst them.

According to Cantor, he only needs to turn 3 of the 37 to kill the bill.

While it remains to be seen what the final bill will look like, Rep. Smith’s constituents should be prepared to vigorously lobby their congressman until and unless he confirms his support. Cantor and his colleagues can bluster all they want, but it’s local voters who politicians listen to most.

Newly elected Bellevue Mayor Don Davidson on the future of light rail in his fair city:

“They haven’t figured out how to get across Lake Washington. It’s going to be quite a bit of time before we see light rail being laid here.”

Um… when are anti-rail, Kemper Freeman toadies like Davidson going to pull their collective head out of the sand (or whatever dark hole in which they keep it)?  Sound Transit has figured out how to get light rail across Lake Washington. It’s this fancy new technology they call a bridge. In fact, they plan to use the same center span of the I-90 floating bridge that was specifically designed to accommodate light rail in accordance with a memorandum signed by the city of Bellevue way back in 1976.

I understand that Davidson would prefer that East Link pass by the outskirts of Bellevue, or pass unseen through a half billion dollar tunnel (paid for by anyone but Bellevue taxpayers), or ideally, not be built at all. But statements like this one just makes him sound like an idiot.

Last night the Democratic Precinct Committee Officers of the 41st Legislative District overwhelmingly selected attorney and activist Randy Gordon as their first choice to fill state Sen. Fred Jarrett’s recently vacated office. The final tally:

Randy Gordon     54
Aaron Belenky     9
George Pieper     8

Legally, the King County Council can appoint any of the three nominees above as Jarrett’s replacement, but according to protocol and precedent, the council almost always selects the first choice of the PCOs, and unanimously. And with such a decisive victory last night, it’s hard to imagine the council breaking with tradition.

So my congratulations to soon-to-be-senator Gordon, who has certainly worked hard enough over the past few years to put him in this position, and who I am confident will well represent the progressive values of Democrats throughout the district, the region and the state. As I previously mentioned, I first met Gordon in 2005 when he was a classmate of mine at Camp Wellstone. Other graduates from my class include state Representatives Marko Liias (D-21) and Tina Orwall (D-33), and state Sen. Eric Oemig (D-45), not to mention Darcy Burner.

That’s quite a group of accomplished alumnae, and both Wellstone Action and Progressive Majority deserve your support for bringing this valuable candidate training program into Washington state.

It’s about time to break that New Year resolution by joining us tonight for a little politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning about 8:00 pm. Or stop by earlier and join me for dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 341 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan will not seek reelection.

Anybody who thinks the Dems won’t have fewer seats in both houses next year than they have this year is crazy, and anybody who thinks we’ll get a better health care reform bill with fewer Dems than with more, is out of their fucking mind.

It would have been nice if the Senate leadership had the balls to go nuclear and do away with the filibuster, but they don’t and they won’t. So the bill we get out of conference is the bill we get. And if we don’t pass anything, the Democratic loses next November will be even steeper than they otherwise would be.

Time to pass health care reform, claim victory, and then start the arduous process of incrementally improving on it bit by bit.

Folks around these parts sure do love the illusion of nonpartisanship, but as demonstrated by yesterday’s Mercer Island mayoral brouhaha, it is in practice exactly that.

The putatively nonpartisan Mercer Island City Council met yesterday to select a new mayor, and under much pressure, the council split on party lines to elect not-so-secret Democrat Jim Pearman to another term. Everybody knows who the four Democrats and three Republicans are, so the outcome should not have been a surprise, but not-so-secret Democrat Dan Grausz, unhappy with Pearman’s performance in office, had strongly signaled that he was planning to vote for not-so-secret Republican Steve Litzow.

It’s not like the mayor does all that much other than chair city council meetings, so one wouldn’t think such a fit of party line crossing would be such a big deal. But the mayorship has proven a valuable bullet point on one’s political resume, and a reliable steppingstone to higher office. Both state Sen. Fred Jarrett and state Rep. Judy Clibborn are former Mercer Island mayors, as have been other past 41st District legislators. And Litzow clearly has his heart set on higher office.

So the biggest issue before the city council yesterday was not really about who would get to chair the meetings over the next two years, as it was about whether they would give Litzow a big leg up in his campaign this November. Last year, Litzow ran as a Republican against freshman Rep. Marcie Maxwell for her seat, and this year he is widely expected to pursue the open senate seat Jarrett is vacating. However disappointed Grausz was with the way Pearman runs the meetings, did he really want to be responsible for potentially helping Republicans pick up a seat in the state senate?

Apparently not. And as much as some might bemoan the incursion of partisan politics into the deliberations of a nonpartisan council, well, welcome to the real world.

Politics is an adversarial process. Deal with it.

Tell them you’re taking them to the Fun Forest at the Seattle Center to go on the rides, only to show up and find that it’s gone.

They’ll look back and laugh, someday.

Let’s see… so the Seattle Times consistently opposes spending tax dollars to build a light rail system approved by a popular vote of the people, yet it supports spending tax dollars to build a passenger terminal at Everett’s Paine Field to support commercial airline service that is widely opposed by the surrounding neighborhoods.

Good to see that they are clearly in touch with the values of their community.

Allen Quist, a Republican former state representative challenging U.S. Rep. Tim Walz (D-MN), explains why he’s running for office:

“It’s because I, like you, have seen that our country is being destroyed. I mean, this is — every generation has had to fight the fight for freedom. This is our fight. And this is our time. This is it. Terrorism, yes — but that’s not the big battle. The big battle is in D.C., with the radicals. They aren’t liberals, they’re radicals. Obama, Pelosi, Walz — they’re not liberals, they’re radicals. They are destroying our country. And people all over are figuring that out.”

Hear that? The big battle isn’t against the terrorists… it’s against us liberals. Because, I suppose, we’re, um, worse than the terrorists.

It’s good to see that Republicans haven’t lost their perspective.

With former Seattle City Council member Jan Drago appointed as a caretaker to fill Dow Constantine’s vacated King County Council seat through the end of the year, the rest of the dominoes are beginning to fall into place.

State Sen. Joe McDermott (D-34), the first choice of Democrats on the council as well as West Seattle party loyalists, will return to Olympia for the coming session, before running to fill the seat permanently next November. No doubt state Rep. Zack Hudgins (D-11) will be awfully tempted to take a crack at the race too, but at this point you gotta consider McDermott the frontrunner.

And with Constantine’s seat settled, and a Democratic majority back in control of the council, the once crowded field to replace state Sen. Fred Jarrett (D-41) is starting to clear out. Last week Vicki Orrico withdrew her name from consideration, and today Maureen Judge (who I call “Mo” and my daughter calls “mom”) announced her withdrawal too:

I have decided today that I am withdrawing my name from consideration for the 41st State Senate appointment.

Because these are difficult times, because we face so many challenges throughout the district and state, I feel my most vital and important contribution to our community is in my current role role as Executive Director of the Washington Toxics Coalition and getting the Safe Baby Bottle Act of 2010 passed in Washington state.

The only inside information I’ll pass on is that it wasn’t an easy decision, but it’s probably for the best… at least for me. Mo would have made a great progressive addition to the state senate, but I have to admit a little selfish relief at her withdrawal. Had she won the appointment, the next two months would have been rather hellish from a scheduling perspective, and then once the session was done the campaign would begin.

As for the rest of the field, considering the number of endorsements and commitments he’s already locked up, you gotta consider Randy Gordon the clear frontrunner in tomorrow’s vote of 41st District Democratic PCOs. And as a matter of protocol, the council almost always goes with the PCO’s first choice.

Over at Crosscut, real Ted Van Dyk laments the decline in public civility.

We face unacceptable losses of civility. The in-your-face insults characteristic of many blogs and even traditional media reflect a general loss of respect for each other. The old political dictum, “Tough on issues; soft on people,” has long since been breeched. How many angry print or on-line columns, broadcast commentaries, or political rants have you seen in recent months, flowing from mention of the names Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney, Joe Lieberman, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, George W. Bush, Barney Frank or, locally, Tim Eyman? Not critiques of their policy views but insulting personal attacks and characterizations. The communications flowing from partisan political committees and true believing single-issue groups are often toxic.

Yeah… well… um… in your face, Van Dyk!

First of all, as our state’s best known purveyor of insulting personal attacks on Tim Eyman, I just want to calmly and maturely point out that he started it. If not for Eyman’s own infamous lack of civility, my tit for tat response would never have garnered so many headlines in return. As I explained at the time, in seeking to officially proclaim Eyman a “horse’s ass,” I was not making a mockery of the initiative process; rather, I was just pointing out the mockery that Eyman had already made of it. Eyman is a horse’s ass, and that’s the uncomfortable truth that made my initiative both funny and compelling.

Furthermore, as I have well demonstrated, it is possible to methodically and rationally critique one’s policies, while simultaneously indulging in personal attacks. Indeed, I’d wager that nobody has written more substantively and at greater length on the policy implications of Eyman’s various initiatives than I have over the past six years. Do I resort to name-calling and hyperbole from time to time? Sure. Timmy deserves it. But when it comes to a factual and substantive debate on tax structure issues, I consistently kick Eyman’s sound-bite-repeating equine ass. (Which, by the way, is why Tim won’t even make eye contact with me anymore, let alone engage me in live debate.)

Likewise, it is also possible to maintain an air of civility while, intentionally or not, consistently repeating the same pack of discredited lies, as Van Dyk has relentlessly done in opposing Sound Transit. I suppose Van Dyk might be offended by such bluntness of opinion, but I personally prefer rude truths to polite lies, and unlike him I strive never to conflate solemnity with seriousness, nor civility with being civic-minded.

No doubt Van Dyk pines for the oh-so-civil, bipartisan days when political operatives from both parties might deliver a suitcase full of $100 bills to Richard Nixon, but not me. For if that’s what civility looks like, I want nothing to do with it.

You know, because Christians never get involved in self-destructive sex scandals.

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