That’s the same Jim Horn who was shitcanned by Bellevue and Mercer Island voters back in 2004. He’s also the guy who thought it a good idea to build another six lane freeway east of I-405. The Sierra Club and the teachers worked hard to kick him out of office.
It’s only a rumor, but I hear he’s thinking about going after the guy who beat him in ’04, Sen. Brian Weinstein.
How anemic is the suburban GOP? The Democrats are building a deep, deep bench with candidates like Maureen Judge in Mercer Island and Keri Andrews in Bellevue. Jim Horn’s spending his days carrying water for Dino Rossi and attacking light rail. I don’t know if he’s got another campaign in him. But let’s hope so!
[off topic comment deleted]
Ironically enough, had the original freeway plan for the Seattle-metro area been fully carried out back in the day, there would’ve been a 6-lane freeway east of 405, the southern half of which would’ve taken the same general route as SR 18 does today. I remember reading in Pacific magazine (you remember, one of the mini-magazines that came in the Sunday paper) several years ago about the original freeway plan, which if I remember correctly, would’ve thrown a third bridge across Lake Washington and made SR 509 a six-lane freeway all the way to Tacoma, among other things.
No need to run for office when people like Will can carry your water on highway expansion… And those stupid Sierra Clubbers, knocking Horn out of office, only to have Democrats move forward with 182 miles of highway expansion.
Horn, Esser and some other republican were the ones that brought us RTID, back when Republicans had the state senate. All of them have since lost. If roads are so popular on the east side of Lake Washington, how come they lost? And why did a Democratic legislature keep RTID’s climate changing highways alive, and then tie it to Sound Transit? We got a raw deal from the Democrats on this one.
@2 & 3:
Yah, guys, the Reeps gave us a $16B highway expansion in RTID…fortunately there are some GOOD enviro groups that have been engaged the past 5 years and turned it into a $7B highway package that includes – HOV lanes, park & rides, bus service, bike lanes and bridge safety projects.
I’m still ashamed of the Sierra Club and their hypocritical leaders.
Hey asshole @ 3
I try to show the SC a little love by highlighting their good work on defeating Jim Horn, and that’s how you come back. Nice.
@ 4
Maybe it’s a raw deal, but considering how transit actually polls worse on its own than the joint package, it may be a silver lining that Olympia Democrats forced this shotgun marriage.
the original 2002 RTID bill was ESSB 6140. It’s author was Senator Dan McDonald, R-48, and main co-sponsors were senators Finkbinder (R-45) and Horn (R-41). They were nicknamed McFinkHorn and their bill nicknamed: “SB 405”, as its prime purpose was to expand I-405.
the Legislature had two other big transportation bills that Session: SB 6464, the monorail enabling legislation for Seattle, and Referendum 51, that subsequently defeated at the polls.
The three Eastside Rs are out of office, all replaced by Ds. But their government lives on in the form of RTID. Their premises were:
– The state has under funded highway expansion;
– They could not get a large enough statewide gas tax to get the highway expansions they wanted, so they wanted to set a regional body for a shot of highway capital;
– It was OK to use the sales tax for highways (they were not populist Ds);
– So called highways of statewide significance were the most important transportation investments, so 90 percent of the RTID revenue had to be spent on those.
In the subsequent sessions, their law has been amended, often due to the work of TCC. For example, the sales tax allowed was reduced to one-tenth from five-tenths (still too high) and RTID funds were allowed to fund transit service for construction mitigation.
The six original revennue sources were the sales tax, MVET, commercial parking tax, employor tax, a $100 vehicle fee, and tolls. Later, the local option gas tax was added.
The bill required county equity or that revenues raised in a county had to be spent in that county. The commitee ended up using implicit subarea equity in King County. In the first few years, Councilmember Pelz (now WSDCC Chair) caused some good trouble on the RTID committee.
The governing committees consisted only of the county councilmembers. The three executives were cut out of the decision making (see Sims, Ron).
In the 2006 Session, the legislature tied ST2 and RTID together. Something like McFinkHorn’s monster and its bride in a shotgun marriage.
Now the Kempers and Eymanites are throwing stones at the Bride of McFinkHorn’s monster; the Sierras are throwing stones at McFinkHorn’s monster; and those in the middle are trying to teach the two monsters to tap dance together.
Should Horn run again, I expect he would be embarassed. He is a troglodite.
As a 18-year resident of MI, I’m glad the old trogs are being swept away–Jennifer Dunn, Jim Horn, et al. “Conservative thinking” [sic] is based on fear of change and deception of voters: I’ll cut your taxes” = “I’ll cut your services and amenities,” but no one thinks about that in the voting booth.
Sucks to a Republi’cant’.
I can’t wait to see Darcy sworn in !! (Bye bye Pretty Boy Reichert)
Will
Considering your name calling and attacks on Sierra Club motivation in prior posts, @3 was a pretty tame response. But the love was nice. You actually owe the Sierra Club a whole lot more love for the work they have done to help elect pro-environment candidates over the years, and generate grassroots pressure on elected officials.
So, @5, how many good environmentalists did TCC endorse? The answer is none, that’s not their job. The Sierra Club plays a major role in creating the public demand and legislative climate in which TCC and the other groups operate, and anyone knowledgeable about state politics recognizes that ideally the groups should complement each other. Your implied comparison is pointless.
As for RTID, yes there were improvements, but it is still bad. Billions in regressive taxes to make global warming worse.
As for roads helping the ballot measure, Sound Transit passed alone before (about a year after failing the first vote), and could pass alone again. Transit Now passed without any road spending attached. Light rail is just going to become more popular with time. This global warming stuff is not some type of passing fad. Almost daily we learn more about what needs to be done. And it is not building more highways. http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....rce08.html
Jim Horn and the Sierra Club appear to have mended fences – they are both opposed to improving transportation at the ballot this November.
The Sierra Club is prominently featured on Jim Horn’s No on Prop. 1 website.
Horn’s biggest backer, Kemper Freeman Jr., calls the local Sierra Club guy “my best friend.”
All the stupid things the local Sierra Club is saying about light rail are being catalogued by Horn and Freeman for their fight against light rail in the future.
The best way to end this late blooming lovey dovey alliance between the Sierra Club and Jim Horn is to reject their marriage and vote YES on Prop. 1.
It is the only thing on the ballot this fall that actually does anything real in reducing global warming.
And a successful ballot measure this fall would allow the Sierra Club to regroup and come to their senses in time to oppose Horn when he tries to get back to the state Senate.
@10
That is just silly. That is like saying all the proponents of RTID are tools of the pavement lobby and big corporate donors that are financing the RTID campaign.
Jim Horn and Kemper Freeman are yesterday’s news. We have already proven we know how to beat them. What we have not proven is that we are ready to get serious about the fight on global warming.
That is why voting no on RTID is so important. It is a massive highway expansion that makes global warming worse. Make the politicians come back with a better plan.
The RTID and ST measures NEVER should have been joined together. It is nothing short of immoral for the legislature to force voters who support light rail expansion to vote in favor of massive road expansion at the same time.
That is logrolling. It is unconstitutional. If the measure in November passes, it will be invalidated. RTID/ST2 is unconstitutional for exactly the same reasons I-695 was unconstitutional. In the case of RTID/ST2, the violation of the single-subject rule is even more obvious.
Supporting RTID/ST2 is supporting sleazy, lazy, anti-voter output from the legislature. And it is of no moment that the D’s not the R’s are running the show in Olympia now.
5:
Actually, the original freeway plan I mentioned dated back to the Fifties and Sixties, when I-5 was originally put through. The only real signs of what might have been are the roots (best term I could think of) of off-ramps that were never finished. I do believe that there’s one in either the West Seattle Freeway or I-90 interchanges, and one in downtown Portland as well. You are right in saying that it was a Republican administration that brought it about (with a Dem-controlled Congress, though), but things were different back in Eisenhower’s day…….back then, $16B was probably more than what the budget was for the entire Interstate Highway System.
@7 nice history, but one fact left out. There was a reason Horn created the RTID with only county councilmembers making the decisions, leaving out county executives and mayors of the cities were the traffic is. At the time RTID was created, a majority of all three county councils were Republicans while all three county execs were Democrats and while the mayors are non-partisan, the mayors of largest city in each county were also D’s. Horn is famously partisan and was among those legislators of the 90’s who “partisanized” transportation funding, which until that point in Washington had always been handled in a bipartisan manner.
@11
You are right, the Sierra Club’s alliance with Jim Horn in opposition to light rail is painfully silly. The Sierra Club’s alliance is also turning Horn and Freeman into today’s news and stoking their anti-rail campaign in newspapers, TV and on the radio. It looks like the Sierra Club has been whored out to the highway lobby. Have you seen their ads?
Voting against the regional transit spine that would produce more compact development, run on clean electricity, and put more people on transit is seriously misguided if the goal is doing something real about global warming.
A vote against Prop. 1 is a vote against the biggest and best light rail system ever offered to voters. It is a vote against Sound Transit. It is a vote against a massive transit investment and a minimal road investment – just ask Jim Horn and Kemper Freeman Jr. and their allies, the local Sierra Club.
To the Sierra Club: Get real. The solution to global warming is cleaning up smokestack industries. Oops, that’s right, we don’t HAVE any of those here. I guess that means that next thing we need to do is get rid of gas-powered cars, right? How do we do that, by banning road construction? Yeah, that’ll work…
For cripessake, the solution is staring you in the face while you piss on the best chance in a generation to build a real, live, big-city transit system (down your own leg, I might add): the solution to global warming in this region is pushing for policies that quickly bring to market more affordable alternate fuel, non-polluting vehicles that people can actually buy. If you think you’re going to win the hearts and minds by telling Joe and Jane Sixpack how to live, you are forever relegated to the margins and doomed to irrelevance.
“In the subsequent sessions, their law has been amended, often due to the work of TCC. For example, the sales tax allowed was reduced to one-tenth from five-tenths (still too high) and RTID funds were allowed to fund transit service for construction mitigation.”
eddiew (aka Jack Whisner, Sierra Clubber, Metro bus planner and anti-rail ideologue) conveniently forgets to notice the entirety of that .1 sales tax goes to transit, namely buses. What Jack “slow buses are good for building character”
Whisner also won’t tell you is that he’s driven more by envy and ego than anything else.
He knows TCC directed that .1 sales tax to new coaches, new bus service, and new HOV lanes and ramps. But since Jack (and his boss Ron Sims) didn’t play the center role in putting the plan together, they decided to take their toys and play somewhere else (the half-asssed Rapid Ride)