A parcel of documents posted on the city council’s website a few minutes ago will serve as the long-awaited legal contracts between the City of Seattle and the state to construct the deep-bore tunnel. A council committee will take them up on Monday, likely referring them to the full council to be approved by Mid-February and ratified in summer. But the proposed ordinance that would enact those contracts leaves several questions unanswered.

Asked if the legislation—with the header “Ordinance”—was subject to a referendum like any other ordinance, council spokeswoman Laura Lockard (a former tunnel backer in the governor’s office) said in an email, “This is an administrative act.” Asked to clarify why it was different than other ordinances, she did not immediately reply [her reply now appears as an update at the bottom of the post].

However, a campaign behind anti-tunnel city Initiative 102, Move Seattle Smarter, said it would consider a longshot referendum to put the entire deal up to a public vote this fall. Drew Paxton, the group’s spokesman, says filing a referendum would provide “another way to give people what they have been lacking—a vote on this project.”

A poll conducted last year found that 58 percent of Seattleites supported a referendum on the tunnel. The project would cost $4.2 billion (with $930 million from Seattle). A state law says Seattle must pay all cost overruns and leaders of the state legislature insist Seattle is responsible for paying unanticipated expenses.

“Through means that are both deceptive and undemocratic, the Council appears determined work back room deals in order to cut the public out of the process,” Move Seattle Smarter wrote in a statement a couple minutes ago.

The package of documents also reveals other complications, which I’ve outlined before, that are now visible in more detail. Specifically, the memorandum of agreements for right of way and utility relocation—essentially contracts that let the state start digging, while striking specific legal protections—are enacted by an ordinance. That ordinance says the contracts will be approved in two stages: first to codify the deal with the state this winter, and second to make them take effect (as required by the State Environmental Protection Act) after the state has completed its Final Environmental Impact Statement in summer.

The second step must be made, the bill says, after an “open public meeting” and followed by a “notice” sent to the state.

But what is that “notice”? An ordinance, a resolution, a phone call?

The council’s Lockard had no answer today, nor did the office of City Attorney Pete Holmes (a quiet supporter expediter of the tunnel project who crafted this legislation).

Holmes’s office instead issued a statement: “When our clients [the mayor and council] disagree among themselves on an important policy matter, it is particularly important that our legal advice be professional, policy neutral and confidential. For those reasons, our office will not disclose, discuss or debate the content of our legal advice.”

UPDATE: Lockard responds by email on why the ordinance isn’t subject to a public vote: “The state policy decision to move forward with the tunnel option was made in 2009 via ES Senate Bill 5768, signed into law,” she says. “The City Council initiated policy moving forward with the tunnel option into City law via Ordinance 123133 that same year. Any action following the adopted policy is considered an administrative act, not subject to referendum.” As for what constitutes notice, Locakrd says it could be anything, saying, “Council retains flexibility and could utilize any of those options depending on circumstances at the time.”

24 replies on “Council Says Tunnel Deal Will Evade Public Vote”

  3. “A state law says Seattle must pay all cost overruns.”

    Dom, I understand that at this point you won’t read the legislation in question, but perhaps you could refrain from lying about it? (The legislation requires property owners, not the City to pay.)

  5. Every one of them just gave the city a middle finger. Oh — and it sure would be lovely to know just who is getting backroom payoffs to make sure this tunnel goes through at all costs. Because, really, what else could drive these people into such a self-destructive political path?

  9. What, WiS isn’t in front of his computer right now?

    Yes.

    Yes.

    Yes. We are getting something damn well done, without a counter productive navel gazing meaningless “vote”.

  10. @8: Principles involve building a bypass tunnel through the core of a major city with goals of reducing carbon emissions and VMT?

    Oh okay

  11. bwahahahahaah It gets better and better in here every time I stop by. I am SOOOO enjoying you libs getting your ass handed to you, and then watching you whine whine whine whine whine.

    Face it. The tunnel IS happening. You have zero power to stop it. You whine about it every day acting like you do have some sort of imaginary power, when in reality you have zilch. notta. zip.

    Dom when are you gonna quit beating what is left of the beaten horse? You can only beat so much of the carcass without pulverizing it to bits.

    Moving on. Go find a new battle. SLOG has lost legions of commentors and visitors over the past 18 months, as this rag slowly gets worse and worse.

    Enough already. We get it. You think the tunnel is wrong. You have no other alternatives to offer. You bitch and moan about every minutiae of detail that is simply a regurgitation of some repeated mantra you’ve already covered.

    Yawn. Look how few comments these tired posts are now receiving. Do you get it yet?

    Seriously?

  12. We ABSOLUTELY have to have a vote on this. After all, we’re voting on the seawall replacement, we’re voting on 520 tolling and the 520 replacement, we voted on the I-90 floating bridge, we voted on the downtown Metro tunnel (paid for in part by adjoining property owners). We voted on buying the Seattle Municipal Tower, we regularly vote on City Light and water rate increases. After all, this is a small town in Vermont organized on the Town Meeting model, and we are accustomed to congregating in Town Hall once a year and voting on everything. (Our elected City Council members, Mayor and Attorney are merely ceremonial figureheads that lack any authority under our City Charter or state law.)

  14. @10, the principles of not abandoning a difficult decision you arrived at carefully, just because opportunists hoping to replace you with their pet candidates are lining up to take cheap shots at your intelligence and integrity, yeah, those principles.

  15. ” back room deals”
    It is posted on slog, you all know where the back room is, it is the council chambers, open to the public (that’s you), not exactly the definition of a back room deal, but you have to say something while watching helplessly.

  16. Whatever the content of the various City ordinances and/or resolutions, the fact is that they are administrative, or ministerial, in nature, not policy-making. Policy-making on a state project is the responsibility of, surprise — the state.

    If either or both of these initiatives should qualify with enough valid signatures, look for the Superior Court to throw it off the ballot, same as happened years ago with Init. 21, which tried to stop the state’s I-90 project in Seattle. Same precedents apply.

  17. The council members only partially care about getting reelected. Their payoff will come down the line. That’s how this kind of corruption works these days. Jobs. Access. And they want to be in the club. McGinn will not be invited to cool parties…

  20. @18 All I know is there is a law on the books in Olympia that says I’m on the hook for overruns and neither myself nor anyone else in Seattle got a chance to vote on that and the council is rushing maniacally and with zero respect for legal procedure to make sure the people of Seattle never get a say on that provision or a chance to respond to it. When representatives fear their nominal legal constituents, it suggests that their true constituency is some other (not quite identical) group, whether it be their friends, social class, future benefactors, cocktail set, whoever… The motives of each individual council member are unknown to me. As a body, they accuse themselves by their acts.

  21. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

    FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: initiative@scatnow.com

    Seattle Citizens Against the Tunnel to turn in its signed I-101 petitions at 10:00 A.M., February 1st at Seattle City Hall, City Clerk’s Office, 3rd Floor

    Dear SCAT supporters and friends,

    Following the the end of its six month drive to raise 20,629 signatures in order to place the I-101 Stop the Tunnel initiative on the ballot, Seattle Citizens Against the Tunnel (SCAT) will be turning in over 27,000 signatures to the City Clerk’s office next Tuesday, February 1st.

    It is an historic moment in the debate over what to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with. This moment comes just short of four years after the public’s voting rights in this project were violated by the Seattle City Council, when they misled the public about the terms and nature of the vote on the tunnel in the March, 2007 tunnel vs. elevated election.

    For the group and for me personally the campaign has been an interesting experience from a logistics standpoint, getting out the petition signers, it has been educational in terms of administering an initiative campaign, and it has been both instructive for our group and the public in terms of exercising our constitutional rights and in terms of all the SCAT friends and the public taking part in a participatory democratic process.

    Over the next couple of weeks King County Elections will process the petitons and verify the signatures. At the conclusion of that process, if SCAT does not have enough votes, SCAT will have an additional 20 days to go out and gather a sufficient number of signatures to make up for any deficiency in valid signature numbers.

    Given the stunning success of the signature drive to date however, both in regards to money raised and signatures acquired, there is little doubt that the voters in the near future will have a much deserved and rightful opportunity to vote on the tunnel project. In the end, it is the public who wins through Initiative 101.

    An open invitation is extended to our supporters and friends to come and share the happy moment next TUesday – Hope to see you there!

    Warm Regards,

    Elizabeth Campbell

  22. Doesn’t it strike anyone as odd, that last year under the threat of a referendum the City Council put off this ordinance to now. Now it claims it isn’t subject to ordinance – I wonder how many tens of thousands of dollars the scheming City Attorney’s office and AG’s office put into cooking up this theory?

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