No doubt the anti-rail folks were disappointed to read the report issued today summarizing the independent performance audit of Sound Transit… though that won’t stop them (or bumper sticker writers like Rick Anderson) from attempting to turn an overwhelmingly positive audit into a PR disaster.
Writing at the Daily Weekly (does anybody actually read the Weekly’s blogs if real bloggers like me don’t link to them?) Anderson characterizes the report as “stinging,” before cutting and pasting a list of bullet points under the headline “New Audit: ST Wasted $5 Mil“. By comparison, Mike Lindblom of the Times (bless their hearts) instantly cuts through the crap:
Though significant, that’s a fraction of the project’s overall budget of $2.4 billion, and Sound Transit maintains the losses are actually lower.
Sound Transit may have “wasted” as much as 0.2% of its budget… not exactly the “Big Dig” scenario critics keep warning about. To put that $5 million in perspective, one of the auditor’s primary recommendations is, surprise, annual performance audits — at a YOE cost of nearly $50 million over 50 years! ($500,000 per audit, 2.5% inflation.) And for some reason, Anderson fails to include in his bullet points the approximately $6.5 million the audit says Sound Transit saved during preliminary ST2 design through its “value engineering studies.” Huh.
Whatever. Here is the audit’s actual conclusion, as summarized at the top of the report:
Sound Transit has faced, and continues to face, challenges in delivering capital construction contracts for the Link Light Rail Project. Through the course of initially planning, designing, and building the system, the agency experienced delays and cost overruns.
Before 2002, the agency experienced a lack of expertise, no established practices or procedures relating to ROW acquisition, environmental, or construction management, and limited management oversight. Gaps in best practice tools and procedures created variability in early project delivery success and resulted in project cost and schedule impacts. The agency essentially started as an inefficient and ineffective organization. As a result, the initial light rail project communicated to voters in 1996 ultimately was modified. Its original length, Central Link, 19.7 miles (19 stations) at $1.7 billon (1995 dollars) with an expected completion date of 2006 became the following:
Segment
(Expected Completion)Miles
Stations
Cost Initial Segment and Airport Link (2009) 15.6 13 $2.6 billion
(Y.O.E.)University Link (2016) 3.2 2 $1.7 billion
(Y.O.E.)However, in the last five years, Sound Transit has responded to its challenges through improvements in construction planning and management processes and implementation of “best practices.” Indications of diligent review of proposed change orders by Sound Transit Project Controls were also identified. From its inception in 1996, the agency has gradually developed management techniques and construction project controls and procedures.
Sound Transit has improved its structure to manage projects and has standardized guidelines on cost estimating, change and cost management, project management, and risk assessments. Sound Transit has also developed procedures for addressing emerging lessons learned.
Although Sound Transit has made great strides in improving its project delivery practices, opportunities exist that will contribute towards its present culture of continuous improvement.
That’s the unedited summary of the auditor’s conclusion, and it is far from the stinging rebuke Anderson makes it out to be. Of course the report highlights things Sound Transit could do better. That’s the purpose of a performance audit: to help an agency improve its performance. But rather than merely focusing on the agency’s shortcomings, the report actually documents a remarkable turnaround, in which Sound Transit overcame its early management woes to grow into a mature and well-run organization that is largely delivering projects on budget and on time. That’s also the conclusion of state Treasurer Mike Murphy, who in enthusiastically endorsing Proposition 1 yesterday, praised Sound Transit’s cost and revenue projections as conservative, while criticizing opponents’ numbers as “bogus.”
Opponents keep reaching back a decade or more to when Sound Transit, then a start-up agency, initially over-promised the Central Link light rail, but they intentionally ignore the progress that’s been made since then. Still, voters are largely getting the same 19 miles of rail first promised (though with fewer stations, and over a longer construction period,) and without raising any additional taxes. Opponents would like this election to be about Sound Transit’s management problems in the late 1990’s, but Murphy — whose condemnation of the Seattle Monorail’s financing package played a huge role in killing the project — succinctly sums up the real issue facing voters:
“Do you want something to happen or not? If you do, vote yes,” he said. “If you don’t, vote no.”
Indeed, if there is a lesson to be learned from this performance audit, and the parallel histories of both Sound Transit and the Seattle Monorail Project, it is the inherent danger of starting large transportation agencies from scratch… which ironically, is exactly what we’ll eventually be forced to do should voters reject Proposition 1. The pro-rail critics of the roads and transit package have this pie-eyed idea that we can just come back next year or the year after that with a transit-only package, but they ignore two basic realities: a) polls show that neither roads nor transit would pass on their own, and b) there’s no guarantee Sound Transit will even be allowed to bring a package before voters.
There are many in the Legislature and the pro-roads camp who are just itching for Proposition 1 to fail, so that they have an excuse to finally pass “governance reform,” implementing a multi-county, multi-modal transportation agency intended to dilute the influence of pro-rail Seattle voters, and essentially dismantle Sound Transit as an independent agency. Such a “reform,” whatever its merits, would be so disruptive, and introduce so many delays into any effort to pass and implement a project even remotely based on ST2, that Sound Transit would surely lose the bulk of the management and engineering infrastructure it has so painfully constructed over the past five years, and the expertise that goes with it. We would, in essence, be starting from scratch, ignoring yet another one of the audit’s primary conclusions:
Strong management and mature agency skills are not created overnight. It took five years from start-up to the time Sound Transit had its policies, its systems and its management practices fully in place. The Puget Sound region should be careful to preserve and nurture this knowledge base and not to assume that every new program needs a new agency to manage it.
No doubt Proposition 1 is filled with compromises, and I welcome a debate on its costs vs. benefits. But the measure’s opponents reveal themselves to be fundamentally lazy and dishonest in their persistent efforts to slander Sound Transit itself as corrupt and incompetent.
Given the timing, I had grave doubts that this performance audit would be fair and impartial, but I see nothing in this report to suggest that Sound Transit’s management is not dedicated to constantly improving its internal processes, that its ridership, revenue and cost projections should be held suspect, or that the agency itself is not positioned to deliver ST2 largely as promised. Large capital projects are inherently risky, and in that context the report concludes:
The use of the aforementioned “best practices” in conjunction with input from technical and subject matter experts and FTA oversight demonstrate that Sound Transit’s construction planning and management systems are maturing. This should be understood in the context of the complex and high risk contracts that Sound Transit is delivering, where challenges and risks will always be present. Focus, innovation, and due diligence will always be required to avoid surprises on such projects.
A “stinging performance audit”… my ass.
Thanks Goldy!
The point about management expertise is well-taken. It’s also something that I think RTID’s most vociferous critics (The Stranger, Sierra Club) are ill-equipped to understand.
I want a link to your poll numbers, though. Where are you getting the data that suggest that levies to fund just roads or just transit would fail, while levies that fund both succceed?
Let me say that I still read Seattle Weekly and Rick Anderson. He’s one of the best reporters in the city. David, your response is a gross overreaction. Go have a pint of Manny’s and relax.
octopus @1,
The latest Elway Poll showed support for Prop 1 holding at 54%. But… “if the components were on the ballot separately, both would lose: 49.5% would vote for the transit package, 45.5% for the roads package, and only 27% would vote for both.”
Luigi @2,
No, it was Rick who overreacted, and in fact, either misunderstood and/or misrepresented the report. He may be a good reporter, but this was a crappy piece of reporting. Read the report and explain to me how it could be fairly described as “stinging”…?
How disappointed the Sierra/700 Club must be. I think they were holding their breath waiting for a train wreck.
But their for ST 2, just not any of the light rail extensions in ST 2.
So much for PRT nut http://dumpmarkolson.blogspot......overy.html Emory Bundy’s lunatic conspiracy theories.
He and John Niles http://www.bettertransport.info/pitf have been chomping at the bit for years, holding out hope Brian Sonntag (and Tim Eyman) would finally “shut the evil and corrupt Sound Transit down.”
These clowns are so obsessed, they replace false hope after false hope, failing every single time.
Now, even the idiotic Evergreen Freedom Foundation has tried to pile on, calling light rail a “boondoggle” (can’t the cranks find a word that isn’t 12 years old?)
“Let me say that I still read Seattle Weekly and Rick Anderson. He’s one of the best reporters in the city. David, your response is a gross overreaction. Go have a pint of Manny’s and relax. ”
He was lazy this time. Like Mike Lindblom http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....it04m.html
Just trying to sell papers with sensationalist headlines….
I read the entire audit and found that it was an overall snore. The $5 million in potential cost savings is clearly not bankable and seems like a stretch. I found myself wondering about the cost/benefit of the whole thing. The SAO should tell people how much it spent on each audit – and the price tag ought to be right on the front page. I’ll bet this one cost over $1 million. Sound Transit estimated it ate up about 1000 hours of its staff. What’s the cost of that? The bottom line on this one is probably that it cost more than it saved.
On the other hand, it seems like the consultant did a reasonable job with the task. And the overall outcome looks to me like Sound Transit passed the performance audit test very well, and better than a whole lot of people might have expected given the headlines of several years ago.
Back then, it was common to hear rhetoric like “WPPSS on wheels.” The SAO basically reported today that Sound Transit is delivering its central construction project pretty darned well against a high standard of governmental excellence. The light rail haters won’t like that. But there it is.
The audit shows once again the nonsense inherent in the old adage that corporations operate more efficiently and effectively than government.
1) The cost IS on the front page – almost $500,000.
2) Anderson’s “Stinging” is precisely the right word. It stings – not much of a hurt.
3) The Times blew the story, wrongly concluding that the narrow audit took a wider view of ST’s operations and finances.
3) Goldy, you’re dangerous with a few facts to twist into your opinion that an audit that tells us nothing about what this system will ultimately really cost us (like Prop 1 also fails to do)is somehow praisworthy.
4) Favorable my ass!
I took the time to read the report, and have to agree, it’s hardly a plus for ST. And thanks to Seattle Weekly for linking to the full report so we could all read it and decided for ourselves.
Goldy–
FYI–
An audit report like this really doesn’t pass judgment on whether or not all the money was well spent.
It merely focuses on $$ that were misspent.
Well spent is a judgment call for the voters.
One other thought–
How about if we just buy all the real regular users of this pipedream an electric motor scooter instead.
Or perhaps a brand new Mercedes.
And focus on the roads.
Or…how about using the existing railroad tracks??
This is about a bureaucratic, social-engineering fiasco.
@5
It is perfectly possible to be pro-rail, pro-sound transit and anti- prop 1. Open your mind a bit.
Down my way in the Tacoma area Prop 1 does nothing to extend light rail from down town out into the neighborhoods, something Tacoma would like to do. We already have express buses to Seattle and the air port. We have the Sounder to Seattle which also has a stop a mile or two from South Center Mall (just a stones throw from the airport).
What we don’t have is a good way to get to jobs and the transit that exists down town or to do our daily running around without hopping in cars. Not only will Prop 1 not help with this it will make it worse.
And then there’s this gem.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....ax04m.html
By Andrew Garber
Seattle Times Olympia bureau
PREV 1 of 3 NEXT
Enlarge this photo
TOM REESE / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Next to Interstate 5 traffic, carpenter Carol Jarmon, of Fircrest, works on forms for traffic barriers on a highway project in Tacoma. Gas-tax revenue helps pay for such projects.
Enlarge this photo
TOM REESE / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Work in Tacoma continues on the new Yakima Avenue bridge, which will cross Interstate 5. State and federal gas taxes that finance such projects now total 54 cents a gallon.
Enlarge this photo
Recent gas-tax increases
The Legislature has passed two large gas-tax increases since 2003.
Nickel tax: In 2003, lawmakers approved a 5-cent-a-gallon tax that’s expected to raise about $3.4 billion for state transportation projects between now and 2023.
9.5-cent increase: In 2005, legislators approved a 9.5-cent-a-gallon tax that’s being phased in over four years. The final installment of 1.5 cents will take effect next summer. The tax is expected to raise about $5.6 billion for state transportation projects during the next 16 years.
Source: Washington Legislature
OLYMPIA — Washington could fall about $1.5 billion short of what’s needed to pay for state transportation projects over the next 16 years because drivers are expected to buy less gasoline than the state had forecast.
New state projections indicate rising gas prices will temper demand for fuel, and that in turn means less revenue from state and federal gas taxes. The trend is not expected to improve over time.
#################
We can’t pay for the roads we have and we’re going to add a huge tax to pay for new ones? Let’s figure out how to pay for fixing what we’ve got first.
@10
1)Don’t know wtf you going on about. Goldy was comparing the cost of doing the audits to the 5 million it found as wasted, saying that both were about equal price and wastes of time worrying about.
2)Your interpretation of “Stinging” is not how most people interpret the word in a headline. Usually its along the lines of “Sen. Craig’s Re-Election Campaign met a Stinging Repubuke with his Wide Stance.”
3)It was an audit of the largest portion of ST’s budget by far. It is a picture of how it handles all of its operations. Exactly how did you feel the Times should have handled it, considering your implied feelings about the subject.
4)How much is a stick of gum going to cost in 10 years? Are you sure? The audit states that ST is using best practices to make those estimates. Best practices means that they are much more likely to be on target than you are about that stick of gum. Talk about playing fast and loose with facts.
5)You obviously have a high opinion of your ass. Not having seen it, I can’t comment. All in all, the audit found very little wrong with how Sound Transit is operating. Considering that its purpose was to find as much wrong as possible, that is a very favorable report on ST’s operations.
Gosh, Sue. Do tell me that where you work that 0.2% “waste” would be considered “extravagent” by any measure. In the absence of an audit, it is undetectable.
The headline and the story slant betrays the typical innumerancy of reporters and those who do not stand back and look at the bigger picture. I mean, $5 million is a big number under a lot of circumstances. Stacked up against a budget of $2,400,000,000, it ain’t much. Shit, a couple of mistakes on commercial property buyout would eat that up in a heartbeat in a region where real estate has been rocketing along at 10%+ increase per year.
But our hearty foes of government will not rest until government consists only of prisons and auditors (who the fuck needs trials–if you were arrested, you’re obviously guilty). And lo, how they will wail in disappointment when they find out that the auditors blew their budget on paper clips.
Timmy will then propose another intitiative to ban prisons as ‘government waste’. “Bullets are cheaper and easier to count. Think of the savings,” he will exhort.
This they call ‘moral values’.
“Wow ” Just received my 32.5″x 17″ duel-sided in full color mail out today from Sound Transit/RTID addressed to registered voter one of many mail out’s. This is how the tax money is being spent trying to get the public to vote for what they perceive a cure for our traffic problems.(Train to no where and unused HOV lanes). It seams the cost for the mail out’s to the three counties is chump change to them.
Vote NO No No
Goldy, your defense of ST’s performance audit is well reasoned and justified — but begs the question of whether voters should pass or reject Prop. 1.
In passing, it should be noted that cost overruns were inevitable, due to the large price increases for virtually all commodities used in construction (plywood, cement, steel, copper wire, etc.) in recent years — caused in no small part by war demands in Iraq and U.S. deficit-fueled buying by the Chinese (who have been big buyers of the new federal IOUs issued because of Bush’s deficit spending, with the ironical result that the cost of construction materials paid for by local taxpayers is being bid up with money the same taxpayers pay to China as interest on Bush’s debts).
I’ve previously stated my objections to Prop. 1 in these comment threads, and consider it unnecessary to reiterate them here, except to repeat what I said before that I think it’s unwise to pass new taxes for a large expansion of ST before the first ST railcar has run, because I think we should wait and see what the ridership will be on the first segment before we make new financial commitments.
That said, I would like to examine two of your statements in greater detail:
“and without raising any additional taxes”
Not the whole story. What you really mean “without raising tax RATES”. But let’s see what happens when to the taxpayer as inflation kicks in. To do this, I’ll create a hypothetical as follows:
Your 1995 purchases subject to sales tax: $10,000
ST sales tax rate: 0.005%
ST sales taxes paid: $50.00
Your 2007 purchases subject to sales tax (same as 1995 but adjusted for 2% annual inflation): $12,682
ST sales tax rate: 0.005%
ST sales taxes paid: $63.41
See how that works? You are paying 26.8% more in ST taxes even though there was no tax increase!
You can argue, of course — and I expect you will — that wages have gone up commensurately. That’s fine and dandy for people who have jobs — and get COLAs. But I’m a retired rabbit on a fixed income and I get no COLAs. So, not only do I have to pay more for the same stuff, but I have to pay higher Sound Transit taxes on it, too! That may not be a problem for a highly compensated radio personality like yourself* but it’s a problem for me.
So, the argument that “taxes have not gone up” will not win me over, because taxes have in fact gone up and I have not received an offsetting increase in my income. That’s food off my table, bub.
* I assume KIRO pays at least minimum wage to its part-time workers, which is more earned income than I have.
“polls show that neither roads nor transit would pass on their own”
The polls may show that, but it’s poppycock. The 520 bridge will be replaced, sooner or later, one way or another, regardless of what happens to Prop. 1.
In fact, even if Prop. 1 passes, it won’t replace the 520 bridge, because Prop. 1 provides only starter money for 520 (they don’t tell you this in the Voter’s Pamphlet, which implies Prop. 1 will buy your a shiny new 6-lane bridge across Lake Washington — which is more poppycock).
If Prop. 1 passes, the bureaucrats and pols will come to you later asking for 520 money. If Prop. 1 fails, the bureaucrats and pols will come to you later asking for 520 money. In terms of this region’s largest, most critical, and most expensive transportation project, it doesn’t make a rat’s ass of difference whether Prop. 1 passes or fails.
We (or, I should say, some of you — because I don’t commute between Seattle and Bellevue, and at a personal level, have no need whatever for a new 520 bridge, for me a canoe would do just as well) will get a new 520 bridge someday. Maybe the present one will sink to the bottom of the lake before we get it, but the current bridge is not going to be there for another century or even another 25 years, and since Seattle-Bellevue traffic doesn’t appear to be going away, THERE WILL BE A NEW BRIDGE. Period. Prop. 1 has nothing to do with it.
The same thing can be said of several other road-and-bridge projects in Prop. 1. The need for these projects will not go away, and they will be built, if not with Prop. 1 money, then with some other money. But they will be built. I’m not saying they all will be built. For example, if Prop. 1 fails, residents of South Park may have to be content with using the shiny new 1st Avenue South bridge after the South Park Bridge falls into the Duwamish River. But the essential projects will be built, paid for with some tax or other, simply because they are essential.
And if you don’t believe that, I have a bridge I want to sell you.
A shiny new bridge. I’ll sell it to you for $843 million. It’s about 2/3rds as long as you need to cross Lake Washington, and you can get the other 1/3 by building causeways for a few hundred million. Instead of spending $4.5 billion on a concrete pontoon bridge that somehow will cost $550,000 per lineal foot, you can have a shiny new 4-lane suspension bridge with approaches for only 1 billion bucks, a 77% saving! (Never mind that I don’t own the bridge I’m talking about; that’s merely a legal technicality, and I’ll sell it to you anyway!)
Well, I guess I did end up reiterating my objections to RTID/ST2 after all:
1) Too expensive
2) Too many pork projects
3) Unaffordable taxes
4) Taxes the wrong people
5) Too much gold plating
6) We don’t know yet if ST is a good investment, no matter how well it’s managed, because what determines that is ridership
7) Doesn’t fully fund 520
With even Ron Never-Met-A-Tax-He-Didn’t-Like Sims coming out against it, you know for sure Prop. 1 is a turkey.
I’ve seen nothing to date that changes my mind; I’m still voting “no.”
And don’t pretend that being against Prop.1 is the same as “being against rail” because it’s not! Prop. 1 is a poorly conceived, wasteful, first draft written by a committee. It should be the beginning, not the end, of negotiations between taxpayers and the various transportation lobbies. Even people who are enthusiastically in favor of light rail should not be satisfied with this package of projects and taxes. No one should be satisfied with it! It needs more work on the drawing table. When a more reasonable, down-to-earth, and practical proposition with a fairer mix of taxes, fees, and tolls comes my way — I’ll vote for it. That’s a promise.
With the lies being told by the left about Limbaugh in such a way that Josef Stalin would be proud, I have decided to add another “S” to the platform of The Smartest Woman In The World.
So I hereby unveil a more accurate platform for her:
Stalinism, Surrender, and Socialism: A sure winning set of ideas.
Rabbit – I know what you mean by a “fair tax”. To you a “fair tax” is one that somebody else has to pay.
So fucking freeloader losers like you can get a free ride. Time to pull your weight pal. You are “entitled” to nothing.
Furthermore, I don’t much care for the take-it-or-leave-it attitude of those pushing Prop. 1 on us. They would have us believe this is the only opportunity — ever — we’ll have to replace 520, expand light rail, built the freight mobility projects, do something about the 14th S. bridge, etc. Poppycock!
I don’t like doing business that way. When people tell me, “take it or leave it,” it better be something I can take, or they run the risk of me leaving their proposal — and them — in the dust.
They remind me of a cartoon I saw in a magazine a long time ago. The cook in a greasy-spoon diner slams a plate of dubious looking spaghetti and meatballs on the counter and yells at the customer, “Shaddup and eat it!”
@23 Shaddup and pay your gambling debt, welsher!!!
I mean @22.
@21 How about Fascism, Fighting, and Fucking Over The Working Classes? That’s what CHEAP LABOR CONSERVATIVES are for.
@21 (continued) Or how about this one?
G reed
O il
P lutocracy
Or try:
G odawful
O ld
P erverts
Speaking of perverts, it looks like Sen. Craig is going to welsh on his promise to resign.
@21 (continued) Hmmm. Welsher, what would you say if I told you that Limbaugh bashed TWO THIRDS OF OUR SOLDIERS IN IRAQ?
A poll by Military Times — hardly a left-wing propaganda organ — in Dec. 2006 found that:
“Only 35 percent of the military members polled this year said they approve of the way President Bush is handling the war[.]”
http://www.militarycity.com/polls/2006_main.php
But let’s not blow this Limbaugh flap out of proportion. This whole thing can be settled in five minutes by John Murtha punching out Limbaugh.
My question is,
Why do Rush Limbaugh and his supporters hate our military?
@31 (continued) The quagmire in Iraq isn’t their fault. They did everything their commanders asked them to do.
This clusterfuck was created by the “commander guy” and his loyal party hacks, and nobody else.
Oh man, it is worse than I thought. Talk about trying to make a silk purse out of a pig’s ear!
It can be reasonably be argued, and has been, that the Iraq War is just going swimmingly too! I mean, Jesus H.Christ, how much evidence do you need before this blog realizes it is cheerleading a grossly mismanaged agency because it wants a cute little choo-choo that is only going to carry 15,000 riders a day? Has anyone noticed that ST has not decided what the fare will be? I am sure that we will get that little tidbit after the election, along with some other bad news.
If you don’t believe me, meet me at the Capitol Hill station tomorrow. Y’know, cuz Link went operational in 2006, as promised. We will ride the Link to the Mariners playoff game, they are the defending world champs. Because the Mariners make so much money, the beer is free there now.
Get off the acid suckers! There is no enforcement mechanism at Sound Transit! All this report can do is make recommendations. BFD!!!!!
What is it Bill Clinton said? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Shame on you, Goldy.
Hey XmasGhost! I know you read this blog! If I’m Goldy, how come I disagree with myself on Prop. 1?
It’s probably a trick to hide my identity, huh!
XmasGhost = wingnut idiot
31
Any day you lefties want the military to decide the next election I am in. Hehehe
37
I should add as long as you dems are not counting the military ballots. You libs throw out way too many the way it is.
Wow, could we get more off topic.
No, shame on you, Mike @33, for blaming the current ST managers for the mistakes that were made when ST started up a decade ago. That’s lazy-ass logic.
The most valuable college course I ever took was a history class, first semester freshman year, on the period between WW1 and WW2. Every other week we read a different book on the inter-war period, and every other week we wrote a paper on it. What the professor didn’t tell us in advance was that each succeeding book was a better work of historical scholarship than the previous one. He wasn’t as much teaching us history, as he was teaching us how to read history.
The other thing he didn’t tell us in advance was that our grade for the semester was the grade on our very last paper. None of the other papers counted. I came in writing like a know-it-all high schooler. I finished that class knowing how to write a college level paper.
You tell me, what grade did I deserve? The 4.0 I got? The 3.0 I would have received by averaging my scores? Or the 2.0 I got on my crappy first paper? And which score would have been a better predictor of my future academic success?
Which great logician came up with the “lazy ass” theory of logic? Was it Boolea? Whitehead? Aristotle?
Or is that just another Goldyism? I can always tell when you are short on facts when you resort to name calling and the potty mouth.
Maybe in college, you just learned to kiss the ass of people who are in power. Maybe it has become a habit as a result of positive reinforcement. Quite a few people 4.0’d in that fashion, as I recall.
All I know is that report is a stunning rejection of Sound Transit’s ability to govern itself.
On RTID, you are definitely getting an “A” for smoke and mirrors.
michael @ 14 is obviously either a Seattle Sierra Clubber pretending to be a Tacoma resident or not really paying attention.
He argues for extending Tacoma Link instead of building light rail to the airport and beyond. Most people in Tacoma know from reading their daily paper that Tacoma Link is much closer to streetcar technology than light rail. As such it is far cheaper–South Lake Union is only $45 million because it essentially is laying tracks in road right of way. That is why extensions are already being discussed with other funding sources. The tribes are interested in extending Tacoma Link to the port. The city and/or developers could fund extensions in the neighborhoods.
Light rail will provide Tacoma residents with easy connections to the airport and employment centers throughout South King County. Support Prop 1–vote for roads and transit.
RatherStupid:
The military will decide the election, nimrod. They’ll vote the Grievous Oligarchs (&) Perverts right into extinction, just like the rest of us will!
That is, if they don’t stage the coup d’etat I’m expecting when the Shrub and Voldemort….er, Darth….er, Satan…..er, whatsisname decide to bomb Iran and the military tells them to suck on their machine-guns!
tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick
Its pretty clear that this audit basically affirms Sound Transit’s direction on the light rail its building between Seattle and SeaTac.
Yes, I did find the audit contract cost, but not on the front page. It was $455,560. But that wasn’t the full cost to people who pay taxes because it does not include Sound Transit hours or hours of the SAO.
It is not clear the audit saved one dime.
@19…RR…
Sometimes you’re a genuine PITA, but you’re not stupid and you do think (sometimes), and much of what you say about Prop 1 makes a lot of sense. Take this:
“it’s unwise to pass new taxes for a large expansion of ST before the first ST railcar has run, because I think we should wait and see what the ridership will be on the first segment before we make new financial commitments.”
When we have zero experience with light rail, why must we uncritically go down the path of expanding it and obligating ourselves to pay for what’s still a pig in a poke? And why is it that anyone who deigns to raise his hand from the back of the room to ask the question is thrashed as if for a dog and accused of wanting to slaughter polar bears, babies, and…rabbits?
There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark-equivalent, ST.
The Piper
The audit basically says that Sound Transit came within 0.2% of its budget for light rail. That’s better than anything an average person would pull off, and it is a strong endorsement of the agency’s technical competence– well-honed since they put real managers in place of the original well-meaning but inexperienced folks. Rick Anderson, Larry Lange and all the rest of the lazy, flippant reporters this region is cursed with, are violating the public trust they hold as reporters– as are their newspapers. And the anti-government and anti-rail zealots are distoriting the report beyond all recognition to support their point of view.
And Piper @ 45: Here’s how I see it– we can wait and see. That’s prudent and conservative perhaps– but is it smart? We have no time to waste, and examples from others cities give me confidence that the initial ridership projections will be shown to be conservative.
And why do we not have time to waste? Growth, backlog of investment, and the fact that we have a political window of opportunity here in 2007 that is not likely to reopen again for several years.
@37 “Any day you lefties want the military to decide the next election I am in. Hehehe”
Me too! Now if we can just get the RNC to stop suppressing the military vote, we’re in business.
“A confidential campaign directed by GOP party chiefs in October 2004 sought to challenge the ballots of tens of thousands of voters in the last presidential election, virtually all of them cast by residents of Black-majority precincts.
“Files from the secret vote-blocking campaign were obtained by BBC Television Newsnight, London. They were attached to emails accidentally sent by Republican operatives to a non-party website.
“One group of voters wrongly identified by the Republicans as registering to vote from false addresses: servicemen and women sent overseas.
“Here’s how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, ‘Do not forward’, to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as ‘undeliverable.’ The lists of soldiers of ‘undeliverable’ letters were transmitted from state headquarters … to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters’ registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballots being counted. …
“The BBC obtained several dozen confidential emails sent by the Republican’s national Research Director and Deputy Communications chief, Tim Griffin to GOP Florida campaign chairman Brett Doster and other party leaders. Attached were spreadsheets marked, ‘Caging.xls.’ Each of these contained several hundred to a few thousand voters and their addresses. …
“The Republican National Committee in Washington … has refused to say why it would mark soldiers as having ‘bad addresses’ subject to challenge when they had been assigned abroad. … Setting up such a challenge list would be a crime under federal law. …
“Soldiers sending in their ballot from abroad would not know their vote was lost because of a challenge.”
Quoted under Fair Use; for complete article and/or copyright info see http://tinyurl.com/jv9nf
Can it get any worse? Apparently so, as evidenced by an article in today’s Seattle Times.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....et05m.html
Those fearless and flawless defenders of the electoral weal, King County Records and Elections, allowed some 71,000 voters’ pamphlets to go out sans pro and con statements for Prop 1.
Since my zip code is one of those affected, I now have another personal bone to pick with KCR&E. First, it screwed my Marine son out of his right to vote in 2004, now this.
I-25…what took you so long!
The Piper
We need to redouble our efforts to ensure that all soldiers have the opportunity to vote — and to bring criminal prosecutions against the Republican operatives who are illegally challenging soldiers’ right to vote.
Here in Washington, we are fortunate that we have clean elections run by nonpartisan election officials instead of elected party hacks. While mistakes and missteps have occurred in many of our counties, to date the only evidence of deliberate vote tampering involves the “black box” electronic voting machines in Snohomish County, where many problems occurred similar to those in Ohio and Florida.
But military voters find it easier to vote in Washington than any other state, thanks to the efforts of Congress and our State Legislature. To begin with, soldiers don’t even have to be registered to vote. If the “home of record” they declare to their military branch is in Washington, they can vote, even if they are not registered.
Soldiers deployed overseas don’t need a ballot or postage stamps to vote. All they need to do is write on any piece of paper (or cardboard, or birchbark, or anything else that will accept ink) who they want to vote for, date it, sign it, address it to “_____ Elections, _____ WA,” and it will be delivered — and counted. They don’t even need to know the names of the candidates they’re voting for; they can designate a candidate by simply saying “Democrat [or “D”] for Governor,” as undoubtedly some did in our last governor’s election.
Of course, it’s not necessary to do it this way, because under Federal Law, every military unit is required to have a Unit Voting Assistance Officer, who can assist any soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine requesting voting assistance, and who is supplied with a supply of Federal Write In Ballots. The FWIB makes it unnecessary to obtain an absentee ballot from the voting jurisdiction, and return it in time for the election. Even if a soldier in a combat zone has requested an absentee ballot, if it gets lost in the U.S.P.S. or military mail system, or doesn’t catch up with his unit’s movements in time, he can still vote on a FWIB — and it will be counted. And, as pointed out above, if his Unit Voting Assistance Officer is dead and all the FWIB have been blown up by an IED, he can still vote on a piece of the cardboard box the IED came in.
This system has proved highly effective in assuring that deployed military personnel are not deprived of their vote — even by circumstances well beyond election officials’ control, such as the mail systems or battlefield exigencies. For example, in the 2004 governor’s election, Washington’s largest county — King County — mailed all military and overseas absentee ballots on or before the federal deadline, and the turnout rate of these voters — 81% — was identical to the civilian turnout, which indicates there were no problems in overseas absentee voting. In addition, over 1,000 Federal Write In Ballots were received and counted from overseas military personnel, indicating that system, too, is working.
In King County alone, over 13,500 overseas military personnel and civilian votes were counted in the 2004 general election. Only 16 were disqualified for being cast after the voting deadline (in most case, probably due to voter procrastination, and possibly all of these ballots were sent in by civilian voters).
http://www.metrokc.gov/electio....._01_05.htm
And given that Gov. Gregoire won by only 133 votes statewide, and well over 10,000 military votes were cast in King County alone — and given the total improbability that all of them voted for the GOP candidate — it’s a certainty that military votes put Gov. Gregoire in the governor’s mansion.
Democratic Party leaders understand this, and realize that in addition to being the right and law-abiding thing to do, it’s in their own self-interest to encourage and facilitate military voting.
Now, if we could just get Republicans to think the same way …
@49 Nope, wasn’t KCRE’s fault, a private contractor made the screwup. Another fucking failure of the privating contracting system! Should have let government employees print the pamphlets.
@45 “you do think”
Listen, wingnut, I’m a partisan hack and liberal propagandist (as I’ve said many times).
Granted, this is no-holds-barred HorsesAss — not some pansy wingnut blog where warmongers and torturers use polite language to pretend they’re nice people — but in this case, your personal attack on me crosses a line.
You are implying I’m human! I’m not. I’m a fucking rabbit — and a party hack and liberal propagandist.
@52 is tongue-in-cheek. The only reason I mention this is because our trollfuck readers won’t get it unless I spell it out for them.
@47 “Here’s how I see it– we can wait and see. That’s prudent and conservative perhaps– but is it smart? We have no time to waste …”
People who want to sell you used cars, shady real estate deals, and penny stocks always tell you the same thing.
Anyone see a pattern here?
@51…RR…
Sorry…KC Records was responsible for proofreading the thing, per the Times’ article, and that office has now fubared an election before the first ballot is cast.
Way to go, Sherril Huff!
The Piper
I haven’t decided how to vote on ROADS +TRANSIT, but I’m seeing three different arguments against it.
1. The Sierra Club line: Too much is dedicated to roads, and not enough to transit. I happen to agree, but how likely is it that if this gets defeated, nothing will happen for too many years? What’s worse, passing this or doing nothing?
2. The Ron Sims line: Politics( The Sound Transit Board) has caused this to be unfair, devoting too much to Pierce County.
This may be true, but Sims was on the board the whole time, and didn’t have any objections until now. Does he really object, or does he sense a defeat for it and wants to be on the side that’s winning?
3.The “Sound Transit is inefficient” line:
They’ve gotten better being on budget, but putting this to the voters now even before any light rail train has run seems a little presumptous. They haven’t really demonstrated any successes yet. Unlike the King County Council, the Sound Transit Board is not directly elected, and it is a part time job, therefore they have to rely on Sound Transit staff, who may have their own best interests at heart instead of taxpayers and the public.
@56…IS…
Your second point in re Ron Sims. He’s got a penchant for zigging when he should zag and visa versa. This isn’t the first time he’s taken his eye off the ball, allowed people to presume his support – or at least non-opposition – then he gets around to reading whatever and changes everyone’s opinion of what they thought was his opinion.
If that sounds confusing, then welcome to Ron Sims.
Mercurial is a good word to describe him.
The Piper
We may not have enough “experience” with rail transit here, but there’s only one way we’re going to get it, and that’s to do it.
On the other hand, like most American metropoli, expecially ones in the western half of the continent, we have puh-lenty of experience with concrete. That experience is that when you pour the stuff, you’d better look quick, because in no time at all it’s going to be blanketed with more cars.
So, what’s rotten in Demmark? Betcha they have plenty of rail transit. Pretty good beer, too.
@58…AF…
Then let’s do it for a couple years and see whether anyone actually rides it before declaring it to be the salvation of the masses and the only hope for Western Civilization such that we have to pour billions more into it and obligate future generations for close onto forever.
The Piper
We need to redouble our efforts to ensure that all soldiers have the opportunity to vote — and to bring criminal prosecutions against the Democrat operatives who are keeping soldiers from voting.
Here in Washington, we are unfortunate that we have corrupt elections run by partisan election officials who are party hacks. Repeated mistakes and missteps have occurred in many of our counties, repeated evidence of deliberate vote tampering of voting machines in King County.
This system has proved highly effective in assuring that deployed military personnel are deprived of their vote. For example, in the 2004 governor’s election, Washington’s largest county — King County — mailed military and overseas absentee ballots too late for voters to receive them.
In King County alone, overseas military personnel and civilian votes were deprieved of their right to vote in the 2004 general election.
And given that Gov. Gregoire won by only 133 votes statewide, it’s a certainty that Democrat voter fraud put Gov. Gregoire in the governor’s mansion.
Democratic Party leaders understand this, and realize that in addition to being the dishonest and law-breaking thing to do, it’s in their own self-interest to discourage and facilitate military voting.