Several members of the Puget Sound–area business community,
including telecom billionaire and Republican John Stanton, are rumored
to be working on an initiative that could take away a large portion of
Sound Transit’s authority. The proposal is reportedly similar to
legislation sponsored by senate Transportation Committee chair Mary
Margaret Haugen (D-10) and house Transportation Committee chair Judy
Clibborn (D-41), which would have dissolved Sound Transit and turned
its duties over to a joint roads-and-transit authority. Haugen and
Clibborn’s proposal, in turn, was a revamp of an idea originally
floated by Stanton and former mayor Norm Rice in 2006 that would have
created a new superagency, innocuously dubbed “Sound Transportation,”
with authority over roads, transportation, and land use. Essentially,
the new agency could spend transit dollars on roads, and vice
versa—diluting Sound Transit’s authority over transit. Both
commissions would have included both elected and appointed members.
Sources at Sound Transit and environmental groups in the region
believe the proposal is similar to the Stanton-Rice and Haugen-Clibborn
proposals. At a recent forum on transportation policy, Transportation
Choices Coalition regional policy director Rob Johnson said an
initiative that “is going to be filed in the very near future” would
“strip Sound Transit of its authority to do anything.” Ric Ilgenfritz,
communications director for Sound Transit, says it’s “pretty clear from
some of the folks in the business community that Mr. Stanton is working
on something. We’ve heard rumors ranging from the same as the Haugen
bill to it’s going to have everything in the [Sound Transportation]
report.” Stanton could not be reached for comment; pro-roads Stanton
contributions include $10,000 to Keep Washington Rolling, a group that
supported last year’s roads-heavy Proposition 1, and $25,000 to a group
that supported 2002’s Referendum 51, which environmental groups opposed
because it included billions for road expansion.
Haugen, who was rumored to be supporting the initiative, says she
hasn’t heard anything about it. But, she adds, “I wouldn’t be
surprised.” Asked whether she’d support such a plan, Haugen says, “I’d
have to see what it says. I’m always leery of initiatives. I think
legislation is better.”
Sound Transit opposes the idea, which its proponents describe
somewhat misleadingly as “regional governance” or “governance reform,”
because it would undermine the agency’s authority in several ways. For
one thing, although the initiative would only impact the Puget Sound
region, it would be voted on by the entire state, giving voters east of
the mountains a say in transportation planning around Seattle. For
another, Seattle and King County, which generally support transit,
would probably lose representation to Pierce and Snohomish Counties,
which are less receptive to transit taxes. That’s because all the
proposals for a partly elected board would reduce the number of King
County representatives and add representatives from Pierce and
Snohomish Counties. For another, the proposal would set transportation
planning back years, as formerly independent agencies (Sound Transit;
the state Department of Transportation) scrambled to coordinate their
efforts. The longer transit gets put off, the more expensive—and
less likely—it gets.
Moreover, several provisions of both last year’s legislation and the
Rice-Stanton plan would render the new transportation authority
toothless. Like the now-defunct monorail authority, the new Sound
Transportation board would have no paid staff, rendering it as in the
dark (and as ineffectual) as the monorail board. As one source at the
county put it, “Everyone likes the idea of an elected board, but if you
don’t have staff, you end up with Cindi Laws and Cleve Stockmeyer,” two
monorail board members who frequently complained that they couldn’t get
the information they needed. The districts themselves would encompass between 300,000 and 500,000 people, a size critics say is too large to truly represent voters in each district.
Meanwhile, in a move that could play into the hands of initiative
supporters anti–Sound Transit agenda, Sound Transit staff are now
recommending that the board should look at a higher range of taxes than
originally proposed—as high as 0.5 percent, instead of a range of
0.3 percent to 0.4 percent. The change came after board members from
Pierce and, especially, Snohomish Counties complained bitterly that the
smaller range didn’t do enough for their areas. In particular, the
smaller plan eliminated light rail to Tacoma and Lynnwood. “Because
we’re talking about a smaller package, the people who were out on the
ends of the Proposition 1 [proposal rejected by voters last November]
are not real enthused about having to give up on light rail,”
Ilgenfritz says. “We’re trying to help them figure out whether they’re
ready to accept a more incremental approach.” 
Editor’s Note: The April 3 print version of this story said that the districts in a proposed elected regional transportation board would be “much larger than Sound Transit’s 18 districts.” Sound Transit’s board members are primarily elected officials from around the region, and do not represent districts. This error has been corrected in the story above.