State Sen. Jim Horn's counterpart, house transportation chair and Capitol Hill Democrat Ed Murray, is ready to fight Horn on Ron Sims' behalf (with conditions).

Murray says the legislature has to hammer out an acceptable transportation package this year. "Horn can't continue to play what I call the 'Transportation Politics of No,'" Murray fumes. "If he's simply going to say, 'No, no, no,' to changes to the regional package, he's saying no to moving forward on transportation in Olympia. Does he want 12 years of gridlock or does he want to get something done?" Murray says he'll stall Horn's roads wish list in the house if Horn doesn't budge on a regional transportation tax package. "I'm not approving his long list of requests to the house if he's not going to move on [the regional tax]," Murray says.

However, while Murray is willing to take on Horn, he isn't rolling over and playing dead for Sims. When Sims met with Murray last week, Murray told him that light rail wouldn't make it into the regional transportation legislation unless Sound Transit's governance structure was changed to make the unresponsive agency more accountable. "Ron [Sims] wants Sound Transit in the regional package, and I think Sound Transit should be part of the mix, but I don't think it will happen unless some of the concerns about accountability are addressed. When I told Ron that there was going to have to be some give on the governance issue, he didn't come out and support me, but at least I didn't feel he was about to jump up and down on my head like he did last year."

josh@thestranger.com