Spendy

Big anti-monorail donor Martin Selig (nearly $400,000 in cash and in-kind contributions) has discovered another cause that's close to his heart: eliminating the inheritance tax, a tax at death on the estates of the richest of the rich. (Seattle Times owner Frank Blethen has made it his newspaper's cause célèbre.) Selig, a multimillionaire with a long history of failing to pay his electric bills, has given $137,000 so far to the campaign for Initiative 920, which would repeal the tax. ERICA C. BARNETT

Cagey

Mayor Greg Nickels' campaign to annex North Highline ["City Slickers," Feb 16] made a June 2 stop at the Northeast District Council meeting, where they were greeted with skepticism from Seattle neighborhood leaders who are not convinced annexation makes financial sense.

This reaction is a familiar one to Julien Loh, the Nickels staffer who is leading the campaign. "We feel this is the right thing to do," Loh told the council, explaining that Seattle could offer North Highline better services than residents are currently getting from King County.

Most of the questions dealt with the cost of annexation to Seattle, but Loh told them the city was studying the matter and wouldn't know until next month. This seemed to arouse suspicion among members. "You wouldn't be doing this unless you knew," said one. When another question elicited Loh's "right thing to do" refrain, a member of the council said, "That's just a statement—I don't understand that." THOMAS FRANCIS

Risky

As if Mayor Nickels's tunnel finance plan wasn't questionable enough. Turns out the mayor's proposed $4.5 billion Alaskan Way tunnel got its seal of financial approval by the same firm, using the same method, that signed off on the now-defunct Seattle Monorail Project's finance plan. In 2002, Nickels said the monorail report "should strengthen public confidence that we're moving in the right direction." Two and a half years later, the agency revealed that its plans were $200 million over budget; in August 2005, it released the $11 billion finance plan that destroyed public confidence in the agency. ERICA C. BARNETT