HorsesAss.Org

The Smith Tower is hands-down the most appealing structure ever built in downtown Seattle, or in Washington state. It stands in sharp contrast to the Columbia Center just a few blocks away. One terra cotta, one black glass. Smith Tower isn’t doing too well on the commercial market, however.

Smith Tower has struggled a bit to attract and retain business tenants as more modern office towers emerged in recent decades.

“The building itself was never ideally suited to a modern, commercial office-type tenant,” said Kevin Daniels, president of Nitze-Stagen, a private commercial-property investment firm.

The floor space in the upper stories is too small — just 2,000 square feet — and the spaces on the lower levels are either too cut up or too big.

Smith Tower’s occupancy rate was up to 90 percent last year, from 75 percent a decade earlier. But that could reverse itself with the reported departure of two of its largest tenants.

Perhaps my favorite reason to see Smith go residential:

Matthew Gardner, principal in the Seattle-based land-use economics firm Gardner Johnson, said Smith Tower’s conversion “could be incredible.”

“The building itself is iconic, so it does make sense to go down this road.”

Gardner also said the switch would benefit Pioneer Square by bringing more residents into the neighborhood.

Nice.

Some NASCAR guys were in Olympia today, and one unleashed this… gem. Analyst Darrell Waltrip on why the track can’t be built without public money:

“You know what, it’s math. My two and your two makes five. … With your help and with our help, everybody works together, this is a win-win. And it is a win-win in a much faster pace and a win-win with everyone involved.”

For $145 million, state taxpayers can help build a track that’ll be used twice a year.

UPDATE:
Well, if Waltrip thinks that two plus two makes five, perhaps we should spend that $145 million on math education? [–Goldy]

According to Holly Armstrong, spokeswoman for the governor, this:

is NOT a report. Then what is it? An eight hundred and fifty page piece of brainstorming?

According to David Dye (WS-DOT’s urban corridor guy), this:

is a “glorified file memo.” Sure, right.

I wonder if Seattle’s legislators, many of whom signed a letter saying they do not support WS-DOT’s ‘rebuild’ option, are going hold somebody accountable over this ignored study.

Oops… I mean “glorified file memo.”

In my earlier post, I referred to a study done by WS-DOT that showed the Hybrid tunnel to be feasible. That study, done January 8th through 12th, was incorrectly described as being just fifty (50) pages long. This is not correct. The study WS-DOT ignored is in fact…

Eight hundred and fifty pages long.

If you had a binder of that size sitting on your desk that told you the Hybrid Tunnel was workable and safe, how could you forget it existed?

You may remember Initiative 831, written by Goldy, that declared Tim Eyman a horse’s ass. In the end, the initiative had enough signatures to qualify for the ballot, but Goldy’s efforts were thwarted by a meddling Attorney General by the name of Christine Gregoire. She felt that this brilliant initiative was not suitable initiative material (“frivolous,” I think she called it).

Huh? Is there is some kind of truth in anatomical attribution principle that is only known by law students at Gonzaga University? Too bad…by many accounts this was the single best initiative offered since the Rosellini administration.

So you can imagine my surprise and delight today when I learned that…

[o]n a 90-3 vote, with five lawmakers excused, a measure designating the Pacific chorus frog as the state amphibian. “I have not heard from the newt or salamander lobbies,” said bill sponsor, Rep. Brendan Williams, D-Olympia, before passage of the bill, which now heads to the Senate.

Hmm… Pacific chorus frog is the common name for Pseudacris regilla, meaning something like splendidly dishonest locust, which, if you think about it, sounds an awful lot like Tim Eyman. On the other hand, calling Eyman a lying locust is an insult to locusts and other agents of plagues, rusts and pestilences everywhere. I mean, locusts don’t steal money from donors and then lie their supraanal plate off about it, do they?

This House measure got me to thinking that, perhaps, Goldy’s initiative would have succeeded if, instead of declaring Eyman to be the body part of an animal, he had declared Tim Eyman an official state organism—the whole organism. That’s not frivolous, is it? I’m thinking maybe the official state Myxogastria (i.e. slime mould). Or how ’bout the official state Spirogyra (pond scum)? I can’t decide.

In this era of scientific enlightenment, all life forms have equal value. So think of it as an initiative to celebrate biodiversity. I think even the new Attorney General could get behind it.

CORRECTION:
I-831 had about 60,000 signatures by the time the AG obtained an injunction — pretty impressive for a joke initiative with no money or organization. It still would have been a long shot, but had we managed to qualify it for the ballot, I’m pretty sure the measure would have passed. [–Goldy]

Late, Late Show host Craig Ferguson, explained to viewers why he decided not to mock the clearly troubled Britney Spears after seeing photos of her shaved head:

“For me, comedy should have a certain amount of joy in it,” Ferguson said. “It should be about attacking the powerful – the politicians, the Trumps, the blowhards – going after them. We shouldn’t be attacking the vulnerable.”

Exactly.

Hmm. Perhaps this explains why there are so few truly funny conservatives?

Governor Gregoire seems intent on painting herself into a rhetorical corner with her adamant refusal to seriously consider any option for replacing the Alaska Way Viaduct that doesn’t include a massive, double-decker freeway running through Seattle’s waterfront. Which is really a shame, because the surface-plus-transit alternative is shaping up to be a political compromise in which nearly everybody could claim victory… even the Governor.

Make no mistake, the surface option is gaining ground. The Governor may have successfully torpedoed the political viability of Mayor Nickel’s tunnel, but that has only resulted in rebuild opponents coalescing around a single alternative. A sure sign of this shifting momentum was the raft of public statements made by legislators earlier this week warning that a surface solution could cost Seattle taxpayers a pretty penny.

A rebuild, we are told, would be entirely financed by the state, but the surface option might draw only a fraction of the state funds already committed to the project. This was intended to scare Seattle voters into choosing the devil we know, but it was unintentionally revealing. First, it shows that even Olympia’s rebuild proponents now take seriously the surface option’s political viability. Second, it put forth a lower range — a billion dollars — from which the city can now negotiate the state contribution. Somewhere between $1 billion and $2.8 billion dollars… that’s how much we can expect from the state for a surface-plus-transit solution.

And I’m guessing the final figure would be closer to the middle-to-high end of the range. Rebuild, tunnel or surface, the state still has to tear down the existing structure, modify ramps to and from the Battery St. tunnel, and rebuild both the seawall and the elevated structure from the 1st Ave. ramps to the West Seattle Freeway. We constantly focus on the 2-mile stretch across Seattle’s downtown waterfront, but that’s only part of the project, and thus part of the costs. There is a political argument to be made that state taxpayers should not be expected to pay the bill for all of the local surface and transit improvements such an option would entail, but I’d be surprised if the state could get away with less than a $2 billion contribution.

But by ignoring the growing momentum towards a surface solution the Governor risks blowing political capital on a fight that at best, might earn her a Pyrrhic victory, for as much as she now pooh-poohs the public vote she once called for, voters in this state take their plebiscites seriously. A close vote might be easily dismissed as inconclusive, but should voters overwhelmingly reject a rebuild, the Governor’s tough stance puts her in the position of either appearing to cave to Seattle bullies — exactly the perception she’s apparently trying to avoid — or alienating her political base.

Not exactly where she wants to be heading into a contested election.

So how does the Governor turn this into a win-win situation? The Governor has repeatedly drawn a line in the sand, demanding that any Viaduct replacement must maintain capacity. The key to accepting the surface option as both a transportation and political compromise rests on how we define the word “capacity.”

In recent months, WSDOT has insisted on defining capacity in terms of moving vehicles, but that’s not always been the focus of transportation planners. Indeed, the Environmental Impact Statement sets forth a broader vision of the project’s purpose:

Purpose of the Proposed Action

The purpose of the proposed action is to provide a transportation facility and seawall with improved earthquake resistance that maintains or improves mobility and accessibility for people and goods along the existing Alaskan Way Viaduct Corridor.

Hard-nosed rebuild supporters have mocked King County Executive Ron Sims as some kind of enviro-whacko hippie for stating that we should be focused on moving people, not cars — but that’s exactly the stated purpose put forth in the EIS. And that’s exactly the language the Governor needs to join former tunnel supporters in support of a surface compromise.

It’s not a matter of redefining the word capacity — “mobility” was always the definition from the start, and accepting an alternative that improves mobility, while perhaps decreasing vehicle capacity, is perfectly consistent with Gov. Gregoire’s line in the sand. That is, as long as she doesn’t paint herself into a rhetorical corner by insisting otherwise.

From today’s Seattle Times:

A previously unreleased report shows that when the state’s Alaskan Way Viaduct project team examined a four-lane-tunnel concept in January, the group thought the tunnel could handle the expected traffic.

Since then, the state Department of Transportation (DOT) reversed course, concluding Feb. 13 that the option nicknamed “Tunnel Lite” — in which cars would use the shoulders as exit-only lanes at peak times — would be unsafe. Gov. Christine Gregoire promptly declared she would only support a $2.8 billion six-lane elevated highway.

The State of Washington studied the Hybrid Tunnel January 8th through the 12th, 2007. They looked at several elements of the plan: cost, capacity, the “flex” lane, the tunnel’s shoulders, freight mobility, and more. The Hybrid Tunnel, the City of Seattle’s official choice for replacing the Viaduct, was to be included on the March 13th ballot. The 50 page study produced showed the Hybrid Tunnel to be not only cheaper than the original tunnel proposal but technically feasible in every respect.

But on January 12th, Governor Gregoire stopped the study.

On February 13th, WSDOT flip flopped, and declared the Hybrid Tunnel unsafe.

While I have not favored building a tunnel on the waterfront for some time, this news strikes me as being incredibly unfair and dishonest. WSDOT, including Doug MacDonald and David Dye, appear to have disregarded the facts with which they don’t agree in favor of facts that fit their goals: building an elevated freeway on the waterfront.

These revelations show that the tunnel never got a fair shake, and it gives me every reason to believe that the ‘surface plus transit’ plan will never get the fair shake either.

If a workable $3.4 Billion Hybrid Tunnel is rejected in favor of a Frank Chopp Fantasy Viaduct, the price of which could easily exceed $3.4 Billion, can Gregoire, Chopp, and other legislators honestly say with a straight face that a “rebuild” is any more financially viable than a hybrid tunnel? Gov. Gregoire demanded that the public have a vote on what is built; she said such a decision should be made by Seattle voters. From that moment on, the State of Washington has done everything it can to rig this March 13th vote.

Seattle voters have been told that no matter which way we vote, the “rebuild” is the winner. Legislators have told Seattle voters that they’ll lose funding if they go with the “surface plus transit” option. Speaker Frank Chopp has declared that he’ll ignore the March 13th vote if Seattle chooses a tunnel. It is political theater that is being staged at Seattle’s expense.

In 2004, Governor Gregoire promised, if elected, that she would “blow past the bureaucracy.” She should start now.

Last week I seriously pissed off at least one local journalist by posting two competing ledes side by side, and pointing out how they guide readers in two different directions. Apparently, because the facts in the articles were mostly correct, I was entirely “wrong-headed” and “fatuous” (and perhaps drunk) to suggest that reporters might suffer from the same inherent bias that afflicts the rest of the species.

Of course the larger point missed in all the personal offense taken where none was intended, was the impact that ledes have on the way readers interpret the news, regardless of whether the actual reports are truthful or accurate. Take for example this lede from an AP story that hit the wire today:

OLYMPIA — More than 176,000 names were removed from the state’s voting rolls last year under a new statewide voter database that was developed to help counties find duplicate registrations and dead voters, Secretary of State Sam Reed said today.

The purge of illegal registrations is the result of the new system that has consolidated all 39 separate county systems into one database in January 2006.

Oy.

What will readers take away from this story? That 176,000 “illegal registrations” were purged from the voter roles. That the body of the article tells a different story comes too late — a large number of readers will only remember their first impression, and an even larger number won’t bother to read beyond the opening paragraphs. You put the most important information near the top of the article; that’s Journalism 101.

As the reporter makes clear a few column inches further down, the vast majority of these 176,000 purged registrations were not “illegal.” 39,814 were duplicate registrations, a common occurrence when voters move and fail to notify election officials. 40,105 were deceased voters who had never been removed from the roles. And 91,954 were inactive registrations and voters who requested cancellation or moved to other states.

To say that these were “illegal registrations” would imply that there was some crime committed by the registrants, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Only the 4,500 canceled felon voter registrations could arguably be considered “illegal”, and even then we’ve seen absolutely no evidence that a single felon registered knowing he was violating the law.

These would be more correctly described as “invalid” and “inactive” registrations, and yes, the choice of words is important, as it shapes the way readers perceive the integrity of our elections. A lede like this only reinforces the popular misperception that our elections are corrupt and mismanaged, but as the Spokesman-Review’s Jim Camden points out on his blog, there was virtually zero evidence of voter fraud in Washington state in 2006:

So at most, we had one case of double voting out of 2,107,370 ballots cast. Which is a .00004 percent rate of possible fraud.

Secretary of State Sam Reed said he was “pleasantly surprised” with the results. The state is doing a better job of cleaning up its voter records, but added “we really don’t have a history of voter fraud here.”

Which will come as a huge shock to some of his Republican brethren, who still hope to run Dino Rossi in a gubernatorial grudge match against Chris Gregoire to win the seat that was “stolen” from him. It also might give pause to some of their pollsters, who seem to delight in reporting that people don’t have confidence that the problems of the 2004 elections have been cleared up.

On the eve of the November election, one polling firm said its survey showed that 71 percent of the people lacked confidence there’d be no problems in 2006.

Of course, if people keep insisting there are problems, even if they don’t provide any proof, some folks might just conclude those problems exist.

And some of those folks just might include AP reporters who get the facts right, but the lede wrong.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

I won’t be there… so all the more reason to show up and talk behind my back.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities and Vancouver. A full listing of Washington’s eleven Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

Washingtonians unhappy with our state’s inability or unwillingness to pour new concrete should move to Florida, where the state with our nation’s second most regressive tax structure (we’re number one!) seems intent on spending what money it has paving over the Everglades and its surrounding countryside.

For all but one of the past seven years my daughter and I have taken advantage of the Seattle School District’s mid-Winter break to visit her grandparents in Palm Beach Gardens, and each year I am astonished by the amount of new construction. Fueled by the region’s burgeoning population and the MacArthur Foundation’s divestment of its huge land holding’s there, whole cities seem to sprout into existence overnight, where horse farms, forest and citrus groves once flourished. And feeding this development, like the vascular system of some fast growing tumor, is an ever expanding and widening network of roads and highways.

Eight-lane boulevards now flow where two-lane roads once cut a lonely trail only a few years before. In Wellington at what a decade ago was a quiet country intersection, a huge overpass is being constructed to ease thru-traffic past the now chronic backups. And the West Palm Beach International Airport, preparing for yet another expansion, continues to sprout bypasses and overpasses and underpasses in all directions to handle the steadily increasing traffic.

Inside the retirement community where my mother lives the changes are invisible, but on each annual visit, driving out the front gate for the first time is like stepping off an elevator onto a random floor — I never know what I might find on the other side. Possessing neither a sense of direction nor a memory for street names, I would be totally lost attempting to navigate the streets on my own. Landmarks, visual cues, even the footprint of the roadways themselves are as fleeting as our few days of sunny respite from Seattle’s usual Winter dreariness.

This is a region of endless sprawl, aided and abetted by a government that seems to be built on the Democratic principle of “one car, one vote.” New roads spawn new developments, more development generates more traffic, and the government responds by constructing new and wider roads. In my handful of car trips since arriving late Saturday night I must have travelled on at least a half-dozen roads with capacity matching or exceeding the Alaska Way Viaduct — many in the process of being expanded.

And yet, the traffic continues to grow worse.

Of course, the Puget Sound region has traffic problems of its own, but to those who would demand a Department of Transportation as accommodating as that in South Florida, I suggest you visit and closely consider the consequences. If the Southcenter Mall stretched for mile upon mile, dotted with palm trees and the occasional golf course or gated community, that would approximate the main thoroughfares that run through a region recently rich with wildlife and natural splendor. With a few notable exceptions, local developers have literally made a mockery of rational urban planning, building sprawling, new retail complexes with names like “Downtown” and “Midtown” — appellations meant to evoke a mental image of the Northeast cities many of the aging transplants left behind, while totally rejecting the principles of density that enable these cities to function as vibrant urban cores. “Downtown Palm Beach Gardens” is a mall like any other mall, with a Cheesecake Factory, a 16-screen cineplex, $6.00 gourmet ice cream cones and ample parking. It is not however, as its name implies, anything resembling a city.

I spent the first 29 years of my life in Philadelphia and New York City, never owning my own car, and never contemplating buying one. It was a shock moving to Seattle, where even living downtown, regular access to a car is a virtual necessity, especially for families with children. But if you think the Puget Sound region is auto-centric, you ain’t seen nothing compared to this section of South Florida. As the local population explodes, the region is building a sprawling infrastructure that will be impossible to efficiently serve via mass transit should the need or desire ever arise. And it will. As the world hits peak oil production over the next twenty years while struggling to limit carbon emissions, the cost of fueling our cars will surely quadruple or more in real dollars. I wonder how this region, so reliant on automobiles and air conditioning, will continue to prosper in an age of energy scarcity and rising temperatures?

It is no doubt endlessly frustrating — and more than a bit silly — that Seattle should require years of public debate to determine the fate of a single two-mile stretch of roadway, and still not come to a political consensus, but I’m beginning to believe our infamously wishy-washy “Seattle Way” may be as much a blessing as it is a curse. While the governor, a relative newcomer to the debate, has apparently decided that the only possible replacement for an aging, 1950’s-era elevated freeway is a taller, wider elevated freeway through our downtown waterfront, the years of hemming and hawing and political infighting have afforded the local civic leaders and elected officials most familiar with the project ample time to reconsider the basic assumptions that guide our transportation planning.

Critics of light rail and other mass transit initiatives like to dismiss it as social engineering — Soviet-style central planning at its worst. But road-building is also social engineering, subsidizing driving and incentivizing sprawl. In a growing region like ours, new road capacity can never alleviate traffic, it can only just barely meet our seemingly infinite and unfilled, pent-up demand, while at the same time reducing the public support and political will necessary to build the type of mass transit systems that all major cities depend on.

With climate change threatening to reduce our region’s hydro capacity and rising fuel prices making our auto-centric lifestyle less and less affordable, isn’t it time to learn some lessons from our original namesake? Seattle’s first settlers optimistically dubbed their new city “Alki New York” — New York by-and-by. A century and a half later, thanks to its density and unsurpassed transit system, New York is the most energy efficient city in the nation, while environmentally self-conscious Seattle still struggles to match words with deeds.

Actor Dean Malissa portrays our nation’s first president. George W. Bush portrays our 43rd.

Noemie over at Washblog has more on Luke Esser and his two bosses. Goldy first wrote about this growing scandal here.

UPDATE:
Noemie does a great job laying out the issue at hand:

The documentation … does not set this matter to rest, but instead demonstrates need for further investigation. Apparently, Mr. Esser failed to apply in advance for leave from his AGO position to conduct WA-GOP business on 1/29/07. His leave request for the hours he worked on that day is dated 2/16/07, the day I called to ask for the documentation.

Mr. McKenna, Washington’s top legal officer, and Mr. Esser, who represented that office to the public, hold a uniquely high level of responsibility to strictly follow state’s ethics laws — and to appear to the public to strictly follow these laws — both in their letter and their intent.

It may only be a perception of impropriety, but even that should be avoided — though of course, there is no perception of impropriety if the media refuses to inform the public about it. At the risk of pissing off my journalist friends, I’d just like to suggest that had this been a close aide to Gov. Gregoire, on the state payroll, elected party chair, and doing party work during official state business hours, the story might not be totally ignored. In fact, the self-righteous Seattle Times editorial pretty much writes itself.

I’m just sayin’.

[– Goldy]

UPDATE, UPDATE:
David Postman of the Seattle Times followed up on Noemie’s post today, and reports that Esser filed his “leave slip” late. Noemie thanks Postman for his efforts, but points out that Esser didn’t bother to fill out a leave slip until after he was contacted by Noemie on Feb. 16. Huh. And yet…

So I called Esser and asked him if he took Monday off, and he said no, but that he did take off some “personal hours” that day to conduct party business. Hmm. I have no reason to doubt Esser, and assume that if somebody were to request documentation there must be some kind of time card or something… dated prior to our 11AM, 2/1/2007 conversation.

In fact, Esser didn’t bother to fill out his leave slip until two weeks later, when Noemie finally requested official documentation. I wonder, if not for Noemie’s inquiry, whether Esser would have put in a leave slip at all?

Postman also reports that Esser was never on the WSRP payroll while still employed by the AG’s office, so we can’t really accuse him of double dipping. But I don’t really think that’s the main point. The fact is, the chair of a state party should never have been on the state payroll for even a moment. Esser should have resigned immediately. Surely, the AG’s office could have functioned without its “Outreach Director” — I mean, it’s not like Esser was a real attorney or anything.

Still, thanks Dave, for following up.

[– Goldy]

(Hat tip: Aritist Dog Boy)

I wonder when the Joel “Global Warming Is A Problem” Connelly is going to meet the Joel “Let’s Build A New Freeway On The Waterfront” Connelly.

Just askin’.

I ALMOST FORGOT…

Joel’s a friend of the blog, so consider this post just friendly needling.

JOEL RESPONDS:

“When you unleash an additional 50,000 cars a day onto Seattle city streets, and onto I-5, they’re going to spend hours and hours a day belching pollutants into the atmosphere.
How do you square your position with its potential impact on Seattle’s airshed . . . and on Pioneer Square, the first Seattle neighborhood liberated from automobile culture.
‘Suggest you might devote some critical examination to the governor’s talk-it-over position on global warming rather than taking shots at those who have consistently urged action.”