Honestly, the legislature spends more time trying to kill the goose that lays the golden egg in Seattle, today rescheduling the MVET voters just supported, than they do fixing their fucked up constituencies. Don’t those legislators have not paying for education to attend to? Don’t they have a lot of work not regulating so called crisis pregnancy centers? Don’t they have a cruel budget to pass? Leave Seattle the fuck alone until you get your own house in order.
Oh, and the MVET is somewhat regressive? Sure, although it has a fairly high exemption for PEOPLE WHO CAN’T AFFORD CARS PAY 0 DOLLARS. Also, give ST an income tax in exchange, and I think you’ll find a lot of the opposition goes away.
The problem is explaining to constituents why they have to pay taxes on a $30,000 car when their car is worth only $20,000. Yes, the idiots voted for this. No, they probably didn’t read the fine print. No, that’s not an excuse. But Sound Transit was less than honest about how they sold ST3 to the voters, blatantly lying about what it would cost them. So, there are no innocent victims here. As for the bondholders … fuck ’em. They should have learned from WPPSS not to lend money to us.
[Edited, off topic]
rogerrabbit,
They’ve been paying on that depreciation schedule for two decades, since Sound Move passed. The notion that it’s some sort of intractable political problem now is a brilliant sleight of hand by anti-transit political forces, but let’s not pretend it makes any goddamn sense in a world where the use of that depreciation schedule has been unremarkable fact of life, not a political crisis we need to gut transit to solve.
[Edited: Off topic]