I missed it last week because I was under the influence some sort of post-RNC flu (Make America Barf Again ™), but did you see Mike Lindblom's story about initiative idiot Tim Eyman and Sound Transit 3? Ohhh boy.
It turns out Sound Transit has decided to allow Eyman to help write this fall's voter guide statements against ST3, the November ballot measure to double light rail in Puget Sound. The problem for the people organizing the campaign against ST3: They don't want Eyman's help.
That move infuriated the People for Smarter Transit campaign, which had proposed its own team to write the opposing statements.
“This is so cynical. This is an attempt to poison the issue,” said campaign member Chuck Collins of Mercer Island, who added that he called Sound Transit on Friday to withdraw from writing the voter-guide statements. “Tim is radioactive in central Puget Sound, King County. And they know this.”
The people behind "People for Smarter Transit" say this is an intentional move by Sound Transit to reduce their case to nothing more than an anti-tax argument even though they claim to actually be "pro-transit citizens" who just want a different plan. (Spoiler alert: they want buses instead of rail.) In response, Sound Transit board member Claudia Balducci argued to the Times that not including Eyman would have drawn other accusations that the agency was afraid of a "real opponent." (See the Times story for more about who else will be writing the pro and con statements.)
Eyman is not only deeply disliked in Seattle but also mired in ongoing legal troubles that include his refusal to turn over documents to the state attorney general. So, the "Smarter Transit" people are right that he's "radioactive" here. They're also right that he's narrowly focused on fighting any and all new taxes.
But trying to distance themselves from him doesn't change the fact that Eyman is unmistakably on People for Smarter Transit's side of this debate. He has a long history of fighting light rail projects, which he calls "multi-billion dollar choo choo train boondoggles." And although he gave up on his 2016 anti-light-rail initiative, he's already started work on another one to gut ST3. Plus, People for Smarter Transit does plenty of complaining about how much ST3 will cost.
The result of all this: Even while the "Smarter Transit" advocates work to frame their opposition to ST3 this fall as something other than a simple anti-tax fight, Eyman will cut to the chase for them—whether they like it or not.
