Elizabeth Campbell, the backer of city Initiative 101 to stop the deep-bore tunnel, criticized another tunnel initiative that will be filed today for being gutless in a statement sent to reporters. The group called Seattle Citizens Against the Tunnel (SCAT), which supports rebuilding the Alaskan Way Viaduct, says the proposed initiative on tunnel cost overruns would “do nothing towards stopping the tunnel.”
Campbell says that the Move Seattle Smarter initiative would “just add to the bloat and cost of government, layer on more bureaucracy for the tunnel project.” (I’ve also written about the limitations of the initiative; and tunnel supporters have taken their jabs at it.)
But while we’re dishing out criticisms, let’s not ignore the fact that Campbell’s attempt to stop the tunnel may be equally toothless. The full text is here, and the most binding portion appears as follows:
The construction, operation or use of any City right-of-way or City-owned property wherever situated for a tunnel for vehicular traffic, or tunnel-related facility, to replace in whole or in part the Alaskan Way Viaduct is hereby prohibited.
The problem: The city council will likely have already approved contracts with the state to permit construction on and under city-owned property this winter, well before this initiative could make the ballot next summer or fall. An initiative after the fact—an attempt to renege on those inter-local agreements with the state—would probably have little chance of standing up in court. And if it did, the state would certainly be tempted to declare eminent domain (with a majority of the council’s support). Reached by phone Campbell says, “Well the state would have to invoke eminent domain… But the thing is that you can always upset ordinances.”
This isn’t to say the initiatives won’t have influence; I think they do. But they hold political leverage over the city council—whose members will be pondering those inter-local agreements while both initiatives are on the streets and five of which are up for reelection in 2011—not legal leverage over the state.
Campbell’s full critique is after the jump.
SEATTLE CITIZENS AGAINST THE TUNNEL GREETS SIERRA CLUB’S INITIATIVE
WITH MORE QUESTIONS THAN SUPPORTSCAT believes that Moving Seattle Smarter’s (MSS) initiative itself is not particularly useful in terms of stopping the deep bored tunnel project. By its founders’ own admissions, MSS’s initiative is not intended to stop the tunnel, it is about establishing policy and more bureaucratic expansion that ostensibly will bring about a financial management policy that the City must operate under — and big distinction – when the tunnel project takes place, not if the tunnel project takes place.
The filing of the initiative will bring additional attention to Seattle’s the tunnel project. From SCAT’s perspective that’s a good thing. There are many things wrong with the tunnel project and the more people find out those things that is a positive turn of events. But at the same time, MSS interests, the Sierra Club, Real Change, the United African Front have not demonstrably supported anything that would stop the tunnel, including SCAT’s I-101 Stop the Tunnel initiative. From that standpoint then, and from the standpoint of the actual narratives in the MSS initiative that clearly do nothing towards stopping the tunnel, SCAT cannot give wholehearted support to the MSS initiative.
Without a specific legal vehicle in the MSS initiative that would lead to the termination of the tunnel project, MSS’s initiative if it were to pass would in operation just add to the bloat and cost of government, layer on more bureaucracy for the tunnel project.
In addition, because the MSS initiative lacks a major goal that would result in a substantive change in the current status quo of the tunnel project, it ends up being a distraction in the tunnel debate, dissipates the public’s interest in this matter, and it essentially subtracts from the initiative process itself — initiatives should always be about an effort to create public value, not public spectacles.
It’s easy to criticize something.
But the law is a fickle beast.
Initiatives and propositions are what they are – frequently a waste of time, but the MSS one is more likely to be workable in a court of law.
Which is why the Governator fears it so.
I love that the initiatives will demand the Council to resist an enemy they’re pretty sure doesn’t exist.
It’s like extracting a solemn promise from your dad, who doesn’t believe in Bigfoot, that he’ll protect you at all times from Sasquatch attacks.
(That’s a promise my dad made to me on those occasions when we ventured to the wilds outside of Capitol Hill.)
Elizabeth Campbell needs to read the history of I-21 some 3 decades ago that was going to stop the state’s I-90 project in Seattle. Even tho we had enough validated signatures to get it onto the ballot, the superior court threw it off the ballot because it exceeded the powers granted to the initiative process. The SCAT initiative is not substantively different from I-21, and courts love to follow precedent. And the I-21 decision had lots of precedent to rely on — unfortunately for us.
Looks to me like the MSS initiative is written to dance around those prohibitions — which causes it to look weak and ineffectual. No doubt more court fodder if/when it gets enough validated signatures.
Okay, now, I understand opposition to the tunnel by virtue of the fact that we’re risking huge cost overruns due to the state’s refusal to pick up any of the risk, along with horrible and quasi-ethical bidding process for which Olympia is responsible. Are these people actually against the tunnel because it is a tunnel? Would they rather just rebuild the terrible eyesore that cripples waterfront business because they like it?
These are earnest questions, I’m really not trying to be a dick.
Or … we could just have a binding public vote of Seattle citizens on the Deeply Boring Tunnel.
But the pro-tunnel people know they’ll lose that funding vote, because it doesn’t work for us.
By the way, the public comment period for WSDOT’s DEIS for the SR-99 Viaduct Replacement is still open right now.
Have you made a comment yet?
Let’s look at it this way – either our lawyer drafted a legally binding initiative that will survive a court challenge, or he drafted a turkey. My bet given that he and his firm have drafted multiple initiatives (the one before 101 was the I-1100 liquor initiative, that have withstood challenges, is that he has performed the task that we asked him too.
Our attorney/firm is Dick Stephens from Groen Klinge Stephens. Who was the lawyer or lawyers that drafted MSS’s initiative and what is their experience in drafting bulletproof initiatives?
So far nothing on this – we disclosed the legal credentials and credibility of our initiative right from the start. So far all we have is a bunch of innuendo about I-101 from individuals with no legal training at this point, and much less not a word from the attorney that drafted MSS’s initiative, if it was.
Guys,
What we need to replace the AWV is an elegant, aesthetic, nearly transparent, fully functional (i.e. no lane/shoulder/height etc. restrictions, providing full traffic flow capacity, w/ downtown on/off ramps, a restaurant/viewing platform w/o huge, non-green energy-sucking fans and lighting, non-claustrophobic, that treats the handicapped like first-class citizens) cable-stayed bridge w/ state-of-the-art Eugene Figg technology–at a fraction of the cost of a tunnel w/o any of the risks; and which can complete our touristic competition w/ SFO, adding to an Embarcadero-like Alaskan Way Boulevard a signature iconic bridge that is much nicer than the Golden Gate or the Oakland Bay bridge.
Ham