Contemplate for a moment, if you will, the following: The same month that King County Council Member Dwight Pelz bailed on the race for Richard Conlin's city council seat, fellow Conlin opponent Darlene Madenwald, the environmentalist whose lack of fundraising prowess has been eclipsed only by her lack of fiscal austerity (between February and May, Madenwald cut checks totaling $5,300 and $10,300 to consultants Linda Mitchell and Cathy Allen, respectively) turned in the best fundraising numbers in her race with $24,600. The sudden spike seems implausible-and it is. Of the total, $20,000 came from Madenwald herself. Despite the funding upsurge, Madenwald still doesn't have much money on hand-all those fat checks for things like buttons, photography, and T-shirts took care of that pesky cash-flow problem.
Other once-flush campaigns that are making do with substantially leaner budgets this month include the Citizens Alliance for Property Rights (CAPR), an anti-Critical Areas Ordinance group that brought in $16,000 in April. Last month, CAPR raised a paltry $685, leaving the organization with a meager $21,000 on hand to fight the "socialist environmentalists" on the county council. Why the sudden shortfall? Because most of CAPR's April windfall came courtesy of lobbyist M. J. "Jamie" Durkan, who lavished $12,500 on the anti-environmental cause.
But Durkan's contributions may not have been strictly financial. This month, King County Auditor Cheryle Broom launched an investigation into charges that Durkan had illegally lobbied the county council against the CAO in 2004 without registering as a county lobbyist, as the law requires.
While Durkan was coming under investigation, another CAO opponent, self-described "singer, songwriter, musician, poet, author, inventor, pilot, and business man" (www.tri-tron.com) Ron Ewart was penning an anti-CAO op-ed, titled "Protect Your Property Rights," for the Seattle Times. The editorial identifies Ewart as "CEO of the Triangulum Corporation, a real estate development and investment company."
Turns out Triangulum isn't Ewart's first business venture. In the late 1990s, he founded another company, Tri-Tron Global, Inc., whose primary product was a never-built "kinetic accumulator"-a "broadband lightning harness" that was supposed to draw electricity from the air. Eventually, the state Department of Financial Institutions issued a cease-and-desist order against Tri-Tron and two other companies Ewart owned, and Triangulum-a company with investments in "large land projects and income properties" according to the credulous editorial-page editors at the Times-was born.
"Commuter cash!" the flyers blare. "Earn $80-$200 plus a one-month bus pass by giving up driving alone." The program, which pays people to stop driving to work, has pissed off more than a few bike and bus commuters, who wonder, rightly, why the city is offering incentives to lazy drivers while industrious bikers and pedestrians get nothing. David Allen, the city transportation planner in charge of the program, says that if commuters "have been doing this even a few months, they've saved more than the program would pay." That may be true-but encouraging car commuters to give up their cars two days a week, while doing nothing for bikers and walkers who brave the elements (and drivers) every day for free, sends exactly the wrong message.
Management at the Seattle Monorail Project refused to confirm rumors that it was about to eliminate or drastically downsize several divisions, including its 12-person PR department and its $2.9 million engineering-oversight contract with Bechtel Jacobs. The agency will almost certainly have to cut costs to pay for the project, which is coming in hundreds of millions higher than expected. SMP director Joel Horn would say only that "things will be changing at the monorail. More than that, I'm just not ready to say." â
