King County voters will soon receive their ballots for an April 22 special election in which they will be asked to approve or reject Proposition 1, a $130 million hike in local car tabs and sales tax. At stake is an additional $50 million a year desperately needed to maintain county and city roads, along with the $80 million a year Metro needs to stave off a devastatingly regressive 17 percent cut in bus service. So of course the Seattle Times chooses to kick off its coverage of this very important issue with a front page article featuring the views of the one organization opposing Prop 1!
An early face-to-face over King County’s proposed car-tab-and-sales-tax measure to fund transit and roads took place in front of one of the few organizations opposing the measure, the pro-highway Eastside Transportation Association (ETA).
… [ETA member Dick] Paylor and audience members complained about how Metro King County Transit is managed, voiced concerns about seeing some virtually empty buses on some routes and suggested having bus passengers themselves pick up a larger share of the service’s costs.
“The problem isn’t on the revenue side, it’s on the expense-control side,” said Paylor, arguing that Metro is operating under a “broken financial model.”
Jesus. ETA is just a who’s-who of old, pro-roads white guys (like the bitterly anti-transit Jim Horn), while the Yes side is a coalition of business, labor, transportation, environmental, and social service groups that enjoys endorsements from 19 mayors. So this is the equivalent of kicking off your climate change coverage by talking to the owners of a coal-fired power plant!
And of course, Paylor is totally wrong. The remaining problem is almost entirely on the revenue side of the equation. Through 2014, Metro will collect $1.2 billion less in sales tax revenue than previously projected, thanks to the Great Recession. Meanwhile, through a series of cuts, efficiencies, and fare hikes, Metro has lowered expenses or increased revenue by $148 million a year—$798 million from 2009 to 2013 alone. The only way for Metro to balance its budget without raising additional tax revenue would be to cut service and raise fares. Which, let’s be honest, is exactly what ETA advocates.
But wait… the stoopid doesn’t stop there. For the Seattle Times insists on citing Paylor citing the Washington Policy Center, a right-wing “think” tank best known for climate-change denial and its close ties to the stand-your-ground promoting ALEC:
Citing data from the conservative Washington Policy Center, Paylor said that from 2000 to 2012, Metro’s operating costs increased 83 percent, while the inflation rate over that span was 33 percent.
Uh-huh. And you know what else has increased over the past decade? Everything!
King County’s population has grown by 16 percent since 2000, while Metro’s service hours have grown 4 percent since 2008 alone, despite a 2 percent reduction in service from its least efficient routes. Costs for providing Metro’s paratransit services—federally mandated under the Americans with Disabilities Act—have grown by 25 percent since 2008, while security costs have grown by 80 percent, due to fare enforcement, increased policing, and enhanced tunnel security. To offset its revenue shortfall Metro shifted capital funds to operations, delaying the purchase of new buses that would have been less expensive to operate and maintain. Meanwhile, pension contributions—at a rate set by the state legislature—have increased by more the 40 percent.
And on and on and on. I won’t even bother fact checking the Washington Policy Center, because only an idiot or a liar would pit the CPI against Metro’s operating costs over a 12-year span and presume that there was any meaningful contextual relationship between the two numbers.
And yet there it is, totally unchallenged, in black and white on the front page of the Seattle Times. Next stop no doubt: a credulous citation on the paper’s anti-tax editorial page.
“As bus ridership rises, battle over funding measure heats up,” the Seattle Times headline reads in the teach-the-controversy tradition of climate deniers and Intelligent Design bamboozlers. Except there is no battle. It’s every other transportation stake-holder in the county versus the anti-transit ETA. And, I suppose, the Seattle Times.
I think the Times forgot to mention this article is the first in their Transportation Lab series, presented in partnership with the Washington Policy Center.
@1 Funny.
I walk by the Times dispensers and see the $1 price tag and think, “Really?”
There used to be some other local blog that did this type of alternative reporting, but they seem to be losing a lot of reporters.
Seriously, Goldy, if you have the inclination to expand this blog into a news site, now is probably the time. I think we’re seeing the change of editorial direction at Slog as it morphs into a hipster People. They post a few news stories that get buried under all the music scene posts and they seem to limit posting to 9 to 5: I noticed this morning that Dom tweeted last night about the SPD not reinstating the charges against its misbehaving officers, but there was no post until the brief mention in today’s morning news. And national stories like the already out high school kid in Arkansas getting harassed for being gay after protesting his school’s decision to prohibit him from writing about being out in the yearbook or General Sinclair’s “punishment” for committing sexual assaults of a reprimand and a $20K fine that would have gotten coverage on Slog a few months ago does not seem to have appeared at all tonight. Add some diversity to your talented staff of bloggers and get Cienna to post here and you will have an instant following and give Slog some serious competition.
@3 The problem with your suggestion is making a living. If I were independently wealthy, or had some sort of patron, I’d seriously be tempted to return to blogging full time, and expand HA. I think I could actually grab an audience, if not turn a profit.
But I have bills to pay. So I’ll most likely take a permanent gig that’ll mostly force me to hang up my blogging hat.
@ 4
You should totally, TOTALLY do that.
Here’s your opening: Pacifica is struggling and undoubtedly will fail
http://www.laweekly.com/2014-0.....the-abyss/
so your competition for audience is lessened and your potential future audience might increase as Pacifica listeners look away from FM for another content source. You could easily become a Seattle-ish Amy Goodman, because you’re already unquestionably revered by a small but very loving band of followers, you probably already have armpit bush and a hard-to-miss ability to grow facial hair, and if you go without a shower for several days you’ll have her bouquet covered as well. You could add podcasts, which would dovetail nicely with Stefan Sharkansky’s once-written observation that you have a face for radio.
And you could tap into that local talent to cut some of your expenses:
Rujax! can lay down a nasty bass riff for your intro music.
YLB is already your archivist/historian.
Advertising can be had at cut-rate prices on Seattle-area taxis. You’ll probably get an especially sweet deal.
Your legal services can be donated by Roger Rabbit. He can also double as an audio commentary source – envision how a cross between Andy Rooney and Jim Cramer would sound after recovery from an especially severe head injury. Should you go audio, he’ll easily fill those 23 hours of unprogrammed air time you will face in the early days of your fledgling effort, because he can just narrate his HA material.
So you already have infrastructure and content, as well as interest and, regrettably, some free time. Seize the moment.
A final intangible benefit: You might get to find out what it feels like to be an employer required to pay $15.00/hr wages.
Thanks for this Goldy. I had been holding off canceling my subscription to the Times for a long time (I’m old school, reading a newspaper on “the throne” is a lot easier for me than an iPad) but this particular piece of Blethenspeak put the last nails in the coffin. The “Blethen Times” has less to do with honest journalism than Moscow’s “Pravda” did at the height of the Cold War. Propaganda for the ruling class families in The Pacific NW is not “news”. Keep up the good work, I hope you get a good-paying gig soon, your point of view needs a wider audience.
Boy, reading this is just bitter: when Goldy gets a job for pay, our best political criticism will be snatched away, just as it was snatched away from Slog. There seems to be no place in Seattle (or maybe anywhere) for a political journalist who doesn’t want to be stifled by an employer’s hand over his mouth, but still needs to get paid.
“buses are running around empty!”…THAT old SAW…are the coca cola trucks empty at the end of the line after they’ve mad their deliveries? are the school buses empty at the start of their route before all the kids have gotten on yet? If you live in some wealthy suburb at the end of a bus line, the bus will always be empty when it passes your house. Maybe all your neighbors don’t ride the bus, but that doesn’t mean y’alls’ housekeepers don’t need the bus to get over to your houses to clean them.
the people who change your bedpan at night in the hospital, the people who sell you popcorn at the movie, who clean the stadium after your football game, who wait on your at your favorite restaurant–they need the night time bus service, which will be severely cut if prop 1 fails. Almost half of America is now the working poor, and a lot of them won’t be able to get to work without the bus. this is an economic and a social justice issue.