After FIrst hunkering down at opposite tables in the state house cafeteria in Olympia late Friday afternoon, April 4, the two opposing camps--activists demanding Sound Transit accountability and the beleaguered light rail agency itself--squared off in a packed hearing room in front of Rep. Ed Murray's (D-43) House Transportation Committee. During testimony in support of a bill calling for an elected Sound Transit board, Bothell City Council Member Dick Paylor summed up: "To support [the bill] is a strong statement to voters," he said, after explaining that his community had lost faith in Sound Transit. "To not support it is also a strong statement to voters."

Paylor was right. Voters surely deserve more accountability from an agency that is currently claiming unlimited taxing authority on a project that already costs about $2 billion more than voters approved. Action by the state legislature could have given voters assurance that Sound Transit was accountable.

Unfortunately, Olympia's house of representatives won't get the chance to make any statement about Sound Transit. Despite the fact that the bill passed the senate 40-9 on March 18, and despite the fact that Murray gave the bill a hearing after last-minute pressure from transit activists, Murray didn't put the bill up for a vote. Murray simultaneously nixed a related bill calling for additional Sound Transit reforms.

"It is unfortunate that the Legislature... may not have the opportunity to demonstrate to the public that they are serious about accountability and reform of Sound Transit," activist (and Sound Transit detractor) Maggi Fimia wrote in a Saturday, April 5, e-mail to Murray.

"It wasn't my choice," Murray says. "There weren't the votes to move [the bills] out of committee." That's untrue according to lobbyist Jamie Durkan, who helped draft the bills. "I have five Democrats and all but two Republicans," Durkan told The Stranger. That's a majority 16 out of 29 members and may explain why Murray canceled his transportation committee meeting on the Monday after the Friday hearing--perhaps fearing mutiny on the issue.

Transpo chair Murray says he didn't push the bills because he was scared to lose his labor and environmental backers--Sound Transit supporters who organized against the reforms.

The pair of reform bills set out to do two things. Senate Bill 5538 would have replaced the current appointed Sound Transit board with a nine-member elected board. Its counterpart, Senate Bill 5674, would have codified a Sound Transit fiscal policy known as subarea equity into state law. Subarea equity simply means that tax revenues from one of Sound Transit's five subareas (say East King County) cannot be spent on a project that serves a different subarea (say South King County). Sound Transit skeptics like Eastside King County Council Member (and former Sound Transit board member) Rob McKenna believe Sound Transit doesn't take subarea equity seriously. For example, McKenna says Sound Transit pledges abundant Eastside revenues to the feds as collateral to secure federal grants that will serve South King County's light rail line, thus putting the agency in a position to justify violating subarea equity at the behest of a higher authority: a federal contract.

Testifying at the hearing, Sound Transit allies from unions and environmental groups identified both of the bills as disingenuous ploys to "kill light rail."

Light rail advocates highlighted two problems. First, the elected-board reform had a provision prohibiting Sound Transit's current appointed board from entering any agreements "for the purpose of implementing a light rail transit system...." In short, Sound Transit would have been forced to wait until a new elected board was in place next January before moving ahead on the project. Given that Sound Transit is anticipating the final (and heftiest) installment of its $500 million federal grant to be approved this summer, Sound Transit folks felt that waiting for a new board to take charge would have jeopardized the agency's ability to take advantage of the critical federal funds. (Asked if Sound Transit would have supported the board bill if the prohibiting provision was nixed--as could be done with an amendment--a Sound Transit spokesperson told The Stranger that the bill remained problematic because the feds trust the current agency; the possibility of a whole new board would force the feds to reevaluate.)

The second problem, Sound Transit and its allies said, was the subarea equity tweak. Sound Transit believes the reform would have added about $130 million to the agency's borrowing costs. Sound Transit spokesperson Ric Ilgenfritz explained that the agency's bond council warned against divvying up Sound Transit's bonding capacity into five separate entities because it would have added transaction costs and socked the bonds with higher interest rates.

Besides misconstruing the bill (it didn't prevent bonding on a consolidated basis), Ilgenfritz's explanation is bizarre. Sound Transit already operates under subarea equity--voters mandated it as a financial policy in 1996. So it's not clear why codifying the concept into state law would undermine the agency's fiscal abilities. Perhaps McKenna's suspicion that Sound Transit downplays subarea equity to the feds is right. As Paylor said during his testimony in favor of the subarea equity bill: "This bill doesn't contain anything that Sound Transit doesn't already claim to practice." Indeed, the bill explicitly didn't prohibit Sound Transit from its current practice of loaning money from one subarea to another. (Remember, Sound Transit could still bond on a consolidated basis.) So, Sound Transit's objection to codifying subarea equity--and certainly the fact that Sound Transit's creditors think the provision makes its bonds riskier--reads like an acknowledgement that McKenna could be right. Sound Transit may have plans to flout the concept if necessary--and so, doesn't want to be bound by state law.

Democrats from Murray's committee met with Sound Transit prior to the hearing to discuss the bills. Evidently Sound Transit made the most of the meeting: No compromises. No reform. Not even a vote.

josh@thestranger.com