Remember all those funny acronyms from last fall’s mainstream media coverage of the Roads and Transit campaign? YOE, for year of expenditure was a favorite of many of Seattle’s newspaper writers and columnists. They were fixated (examples here, here, and here) on slapping the Roads and Transit plan with as high a price tag as they could by including inflation into the total price tag of the plan, not just the price tag in current year dollars. By doing so, they held the Roads and Transit plan to a standard never before seen for a tax measure or capital construction program in our region.
Yesterday Dino Rossi released his transportation fantasy and said it would cost $15.5 billion in 2007 dollars. Keep in mind, that’s in last year’s dollars.
I have done a little bit of “back of the envelope” math (you know the kind that Rossi’s Republican, anti-light rail pals did when they fed the media their scary cost numbers on Prop 1) and the results I get are staggering. Rossi’s $15.5 billion plan, when you account for 4 percent annual inflation over a 30 year construction schedule, suddenly balloons to $50 billion dollars. And this doesn’t even include the interest on the bonds that would be needed to finance all of Rossi’s made up project cost estimates. So we would have to add all of the interest payments to the $50 billion number to get the true cost, well at least according to our friends in the “traditional media.”
You can do the math yourself with this handy little inflation calculator.
UPDATE [Lee]: This part from a post by Martin at the Seattle Transit Blog made me laugh:
So I looked to Dino Rossi’s Transportation Plan with hope and anticipation. I shouldn’t have. This document was first sent to me by a Gregoire operative; when your own campaign literature is being gleefully distributed by the other side, that’s a bad sign.
Let’s not overlook the fact that you can’t get $15.5 billion in 30 years by diverting 2% of a $33 billion biennial budget. That’s only $330 million a year, which would raise only $9.9 billion in 30 years. But the real story here is that the amount he can realistically extract from the General Fund for roads is probably closer to $33 million so his funding scheme won’t even pay for the pontoons on the 520 bridge.
Although I have to say I’ve never understood why you can’t build a roadway on top of a bunch of concrete boxes for less than $550,000 a lineal foot. The projected cost of the 520 bridge is 5.5 times what the state spent building a steel suspension bridge over the Tacoma Narrows that was completed just a couple of years ago. Somebody’s gotta be getting a lot of graft.
$330M a year amounts to about $125 a year for every Washington household. Roads traditionally have been paid for by those who drive on them with MVET and gas taxes. Why should senior citizens on fixed incomes who don’t have enough money for food and medicines pay sales taxes for roads? This is bullshit! Rossi sounds exactly like the light rail shills, and he’s just as shameless. The only difference between him and them is that after he robs senior citizens he wants to spend the money on roads with a capacity of 2,000 people per hour instead of light rail with a capacity of 20,000 people per hour. If you insist on stealing senior citizens’ food and medicine money, then you should at least get something to show for it.
Basically, this is saying that Rossi is selling a tunnel, a new bridge and a bunch of additional gratuitous concrete the same way he and his brethren in the real estate biz have been selling people houses, namely by peddling misrepresented financing as part of the deal.
No, they’ve done this type of accounting before…
The opponents of the Monorail project latched onto the numbers for the total cost of the project, including all finance charges, interest on debt, etc. and began touting the high numbers. That was the first time I can remember a project quoted with all of the debt service included, for the life of a project, and the tactic was effective in helping to kill what could have been a useful link in our overall transit system.
sighhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is a campaign folks!
If CG wants to get elected just saying negative things about the Rossi Responsible Plan for Transportation won’t get her anywhere unless SHE comes forward with something and probably something optimistic.
I have a hunch this is only the first salvo in a series of similar shots across the bow from Rossi et al.
@ 4
The monorail numbers were quoted because the debt to principal ration was so outrageous. We were paying pyaing 8 dollars (or more) to borrow 1. Roads and Transit was nowhere close. The plan had some of the best finances around with a majority paid in cash.
The question for Rossi is what does his finance plan look like? How much interest would we pay? Why doesn’t he talk about his plan in year of expenditure? When will my taxes for it end?
4 Right. In fact, if people figured the grand total of the payments they’d make over the full term of a mortgage, nobody would buy a house.
On the other hand, the shysters-er, I mean the banks started writing all those sketchy mortgages and then turning around, aggregating them into “derivatives” and then selling them for a face value based on the total payout of said mortgages, over their full terms, assuming the maximum conceivable “resets”. After the smoke clears and the blood dries up, public projects won’t have any trouble borrowing money because “clipping coupons” on munis will return to their former popularity.
Seattle Mike @4, you’re a bit misleading in your summary of the monorail crash and burn. The problem was not merely the high bottom line, but the precariousness of the funding.
They had under-estimated their costs and over-estimated their revenues. After 10 months of behind-closed-doors finageling, they pieced together a high-risk funding scheme that relied on Junk Bonds and stretched out some 50 years or more. The whole thing stank to high heaven
Is Rossi the road builder just selling a repackaged RTID?
I’ve only taken a quick glance at what he had to offer, but it looked a lot like RTID.
@5: “If CG wants to get elected just saying negative things about the Rossi Responsible Plan for Transportation won’t get her anywhere unless SHE comes forward with something and probably something optimistic.”
Well, this is simply untrue. Timmeh Eyeman and his government hating ilk have gotten millions of political miles by going negative whilst all the while never promoting a positive alternative beyond “cut spending”. The gov. is right to ridicule this plan and leave it at that…it’s stupidity speaks volumes.
@9: Where was mass transit in Dino’s fantasy? Case closed.
Pontoons, schmontoons!
Who cares about how much it actually costs? Since when has a Republican truthfully broadcast this sh*t?
And besides, Rossey is a fine Christian man and he will run the state just like a Christian would run it.
Except for where he would not.
Jim, a musician who never has and never will be accused of being a bagpipe assembly operator.
@5 She did come forward with something, SJ. To wit, a thrifty AWV solution, no gold-plater tunnel! That sounds like a plan to me. Then along comes Dino plumping for the tunnel everyone else has already rejected as impractical and too expensive — that’s a plan? Looks more like a kid playing in a sandbox.
@7 Interesting how Kerry Killinger managed to keep his CEO job AND his stock options after selling half of his shareholders’ company to a hedge fund to save what’s left of the other half.
@8 It’s more complicated than you indicate. The reason why (a) people voted for it and (b) SMP overestimated the revenue was because (c) there was a loophole that allowed the people in (a) to avoid the monorail tax. The moment the Legislature closed the loophole, the public demanded a revote and killed the project.
It’s an American tradition to want something for nothing. Of course, in the real world getting something for nothing always costs extra. The Detroit automakers figured out 100 years ago that American consumers will gladly pay $2500 for a $2000 rebate, and turned discounts into a profit center long before any of us were born.
@9 No, he’s selling Gregoire’s project list. His own web site tries to deflect potential criticism of the high cost of his road plan by pointing out that the governor supports all of the projects on his list. The only “added value” in his plan is his claim of being able to build $15 billion of roads for only $9.9 billion at $0 cost to taxpayers by raiding the state General Fund to the tune of $330 million a year for the next 30 years without specifying how many old people he’s going to kick out of nursing homes or how many felons he’s going to release from prison in order to divert that money to roads.
Rossi, wants to build the, much defeated, Cross Base Highway. To which the Tacoma paper responds that he’ll also have to, “get himself elected to more than half the seats in the state House and Senate.”
Rossi’s Pierce County stuff looks cribbed straight off RTID. Maybe we should tell him that got voted down. Nah…
It’s a good article.
http://blogs.thenewstribune.co.....bald_faced
@16 Most precious of all is the post by Rossi’s co-governor in the comments section under the article, second comment down:
“From: Tim Eyman, co-sponsor of I-985 ‘ReduceCongestion.org’
” … Our initiative for this year (I-985 ‘ReduceCongestion.org’) and Rossi’s plan follow the state auditor’s recommendations, ours goes with the things that’ll help the most in the short-term, his more the long-term.”
Timmie apparently conceptualizes himself as Dino’s right-hand man (pun intended). Really.
“It’s an American tradition to want something for nothing.”
Which is why, Roger Rabbit, you’re a bloomin’ idiot for believing your car pays for the roads you drive on.
You’re just as ignorant (willfully) as the conservatives you rip on all the time. On transportation matters, anyways.
Dino Rossi doesn’t have a transportation plan, he has a creepy political stunt. And a delusional over-the-top appreciation for his obviously limited political skills.
The News Tribune is right, Rossi’s transportation promises have “no chance in hell” of materializing, even if Rossi were to beat Chris Gregoire, which is highly unlikely.
Rossi doesn’t appear to have learned much: He’d start another big fight on the Viaduct when what’s needed is agreement. He’d insist on an 8 lane 520 “bridge to nowhere” because it would end somewhere in Lake Washington and in court. He’d take money from the poor and from schools and earmark highway projects designed to do one thing: buy votes. And he’s borrowed a page from George W. Bush by failing to balance the bottom line and proposing to spend more on porky earmarks without balancing the budget.
Hey, anybody check out where Rossi is getting his money from?
The BIAW finances are probably not looking to good right now. With the sub-prime lending crisis and all mortgage companies acting very conservative all of a sudden, new home construction seems to be limited to what was already under way a year ago. Builders of private commercial projects are also trying to wrap up what was already under way, no new projects on the books yet. wrap up what was already in progress. It’s hard to finance a commercial building if your prospective tenants don’t know if they will be in business a year from now.
So, is Dino’s camp getting a big influx of money from construction companies who hope to use taxpayer-funded road construction to carry them through this economic downturn?
Rossi’s transportation plan and McCain’s “gas tax holiday” both have the same advantage. They sound good to voters who want something for nothing, and neither will ever have to deliver on their promises- even if they were this November.
As was pointed out yesterday, the Governor can’t tell a regional transit authority how to spend its money. And as Roger Rabbit pointed out here and in several posts yesterday, there just isn’t that kind of money anywhere available in the existing budget (see his posts for details). And as Goldy pointed out above, Rossi as governor won’t have the power to do anything when faced with a Democratically-controlled state House and Senate.
Likewise, McCain’s idea to solve the gas price crunch is to have a “gas tax holiday” this summer, without saying what spending would be curtailed to pay for the drop in income. Of course, McCain will likewise never have to act on that initiative, because – wait for it – the summer will be over before the election in November.
I’m constantly amazed at how much of the Republican economic plans presume that the American voters are complete idiots.
The republicans are only going to care what transpo costs are when a Dem is in control – if they somehow got control – then the sky would be the limit – with all their friends getting the contracts of course.
So…why can’t a suspension bridge be built anyways?
Is it not sexy enough for those in that area? Hell, I would be more than happy with a less than a billion dollar suspension bridge that’ll last 60+ years vs. something that needs to be replaced every 15-30 years….
There are some sexy suspension bridges out there….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.....sunset.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable-stayed_bridge