Doomed #1

The Regional Transportation Investment District (RTID), currently a $7.2 billion transportation tax initiative that supporters have been honing for the ballot for the past three years, now contains no public transit whatsoever, dooming it politically with protransit groups like Transportation Choices, whose opposition played a critical role in sinking 2002's roads-heavy Referendum 51. The RTID's governing board wants to pair the regional roads tax ballot initiative with a separate ballot initiative giving funding to Sound Transit, mitigating the perception that RTID only pays for roads, which—a couple of park and rides in the suburbs notwithstanding—it does. "We would need some significant changes to the [project] list to be supportive," says Rob Johnson, Transportation Choices' regional policy director. ERICA C. BARNET

Doomed #2

A bill introduced last week in the state legislature would extend a tax on existing Seattle bars and restaurants in order to pay, in part, for new bars and restaurants and shops inside KeyArena—basically, a one-stop mall with a basketball court in the middle. The $200 million SuperSonics subsidy plan, it seems, would tax businesses in the vicinity today to put them out of business tomorrow. NANCY DREW