Best of 2011: Seattle elections: still too much bland leading the bland
That most incumbents deserve reelection and are doing fairly well does not eliminate the need for important structural changes.
Editor's Note: In the run-up to the new year, Crosscut is sharing ten days of its best stories from 2011, each with a different theme. Today we revisit coverage about City Politics. This story, by Crosscut writer Ted Van Dyk, first appeared October 23, 2011.
The candidates on our Nov. 8 election ballots are in general a cut above those on our last ballots. The quality of our governance has improved over the past two years, in part because the Seattle City Council has been willing to question or oppose initiatives of a sometimes erratic Mayor Mike McGinn, who is not on the ballot until 2013.
The Seattle City Council is not the pliant doormat it often was in Greg Nickels' years as mayor. The Seattle School Board no longer contains grandstanders not primarily focused on the quality of classroom education. The Seattle Port Commission isn't the rubber stamp it once was for a freewheeling director and staff. Here's how I'm voting in these races.
The Seattle City Council: I am voting for incumbents Bruce Harrell, Tom Rasmussen, and Tim Burgess. I am undecided between incumbents Jean Godden and Sally Clark and their challengers Bobby Forch and Dian Ferguson, respectively. I believe Forch and Ferguson would bring fresh energy and balance to the council. Godden and Clark clearly love their city but often reflect the go-along, get-along mentality of prior councils. Godden, a longtime Seattle journalist, enjoys close-to-beloved status in the city. My vote on those two races will be a last-minute decision.
The Seattle School Board: I am voting for the incumbents on the ballot — Peter Maier, Sherry Carr, Harium Martin-Morris, and Steve Sundquist — with the hope that they will run a tighter ship in their upcoming terms. All are honest people dedicated to public education. But the financial scandals unearthed by the state Auditor, the expensive closure and reopening of schools, the acceptance of a goofy math curriculum, and sometimes slack oversight of administrators cannot be repeated.
The Port Commission: My votes go to Bill Bryant and Gael Tarleton, both of whom have provided good oversight and management
during a period of transition for port properties. Questions concerning staff integrity and procedures have disappeared.
All of these institutions require changes unrelated to the elected officials filling them at any given time.
The Seattle City Council would be far more effective if its members were elected by district rather than at-large. All but a handful of major American cities elect council members by district. There is a reason. District-elected members press the interests and viewpoints of their districts because district voters elect or reject them. Members elected at large often respond too greatly to those with downtown money and power.
The theory behind at-large councils is that their members will put the city's general interest above what might be the parochial interests of neighborhoods or council districts. We have found here, however, that an at-large-elected council can be uninterested in matters such as road and sidewalk repair in Ballard or West Seattle or provision of better bus service or public safety in outlying neighborhoods. Recent Seattle councils have sometimes voted as if all their members lived north of Pioneer Square and south of the Ship Canal. We need a city council elected by district for the same reason that federal and state legislators are elected by district.
Both the Port Commission and School Board members should receive compensation enabling them to spend more time with those responsibilities. Port commissioners receive almost nothing; school-board members serve as volunteers. That limits the pool of
candidates for those offices to those who earn a living elsewhere. It also means that persons holding these positions are subject to conflicts of interest. Their livelihoods or affiliations may relate to port or school business. Or, in a worst case, they could be susceptible to payments from entities doing business with the port or schools. We need independent people in these positions who are fairly paid for the time they devote to them.
After nearly 11 years back home in Seattle, the greatest fault I find with our governance is that a "Seattle Nice" climate can breed complacency and, even worse, passive acceptance of bad public policies and decisions. We do lack critical faculties locally. Proposals sponsored by important interest groups or so-called leading citizens should be examined and challenged more than they are. Collegiality and goodwill often are valued over intelligent review of options and alternatives.
"We should be together on this," is a phrase often heard locally. Why? That is the way mistakes get made. Representative governance only works if we view skeptically matters that may involve many millions in taxpayer money and the interests of many thousands of the city's citizens.
In transportation alone, the result of Seattle Nice can be seen. We dodged a bullet when a Monorail system finally was rejected. It never made any sense but it almost happened because the idea seemed cool, even if it did not meet even the most elemental cost-effectiveness standards. We bought into a hugely cost-ineffective Sound Transit light rail system without asking the same questions and, now, appear on the verge of doing the same with a streetcar system which might be cute but which would carry too few passengers for far too much money.
In Seattle, the bland too often have led the bland, and not always done it well. We've done better over the past couple years, but we can do better still.
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Comments:
Posted Thu, Dec 29, 9:25 a.m. Inappropriate
This is as funny to read a second time as it was the first! Much of what is "wrong" with Seattle is due precisely to voters and thinkers like VanDyk.
Look at his closing paragraph where he takes a swipe at transit. Monorail, light rail and streetcar are cutesy wastes of money despite costing less than the boondoggle of a tunnel being built on the waterfront. More importantly, if we had built the monorail or started 30 years sooner on light rail, we wouldn't need to spend billions of wasted dollars on tunnels and bridges for fewer drivers driving fewer miles.
Perhaps he'll reflect on that the next time he bemoans the state of our roads and sidewalks, complains about our unsustainable tax system, supports union-busting, or dreams of more "intelligent review of options and alternatives."
How is it that Seattle could present such an amazing vision of the 21st Century to the world 50 years ago, but fail so utterly to produce it here?
Posted Thu, Dec 29, 9:37 a.m. Inappropriate
Hoping elected officials who had 4 years in office will now run a tighter ship? Sorry, if it didn't happen in four years, if they didn't do their oversight duty, if the Washington State Auditor called them out as a Board because of their lack of oversight - I won't vote for them. (And calling the Silas Potter issue "somewhat slack oversight" - what was Watergate, an omission? What does it take for the powers that be in this city to call out the district for incredibly poor management over the last decade?)
As it turns out, voters were quite careful in the School Board elections about who they chose to vote for. No "throw out the bums" election here, just holding people accountable for their records.
Posted Thu, Dec 29, 12:55 p.m. Inappropriate
From a seemingly-ignorant commenter:
Monorail, light rail and streetcar are cutesy wastes of money despite costing less than the boondoggle of a tunnel being built on the waterfront.
There is no new general taxing associated with the SR-99 tunnel project. In that sense it does not cost people here anything. The taxing associated with it are motor vehicle fuel taxes which would be imposed whether or not this tunneling plan was selected.
In contrast, the new regressive tax costs that are slated to impact the people (mostly) and businesses around here relating to Sound Transit's financing plan might reach $85 billion. That staggeringly-huge cost is a function of how Sound Transit - alone among its peers - pledges to bondholders that it will collect heavy regressive taxes at or near their maximum rates while any of its bonds remain outstanding.
Light rail elsewhere gets built and operates at little or no new tax cost to people. The structure the government heads here selected though is designed to cause substantial financial harm to the least well off segments of our community, for decades.
The cost of light rail here is massive and malignant. The commenter feigns ignorance of that reality. Moreover, that commenter's suggestion that the costs of Sound Transit's financing plan are justified because some kind of rail system could have "started 30 years sooner" is nothing short of inane. Lots of light rail has been built during the past two decades around the country. Nowhere else are government heads abusing their constituents with decades of heavy regressive taxing in the name of trains.
Posted Thu, Dec 29, 9:58 p.m. Inappropriate
Nice try, crossrip... but I did not suggest that it was cheap to build transit or that I preferred our taxing system here. I suggested that it was cheaper and more sustainable than building new highways and expanding existing ones.
As for my "ignorance," the construction of the tunnel will bring tolls for its use, higher utility rates, and provides ZERO funding for the seawall replacement, transit service, and street improvements which all still have to be done, and which will still leave us with more congestion.
My point should be very clear -- VanDyk's pro-roads bias and backwards thinking is showing. We should stop repeating the same decisions and civic projects that we engaged in 50-100 years ago.
Posted Fri, Dec 30, 1:56 p.m. Inappropriate
I suggested that it was cheaper and more sustainable than building new highways and expanding existing ones.
You’ve put forward a false choice there, and you are flat wrong about light rail being “cheaper and more sustainable”.
Around here neither WSDOT nor any local government engages in any “either/or” decisions regarding whether to build light rail versus new highways. That’s because we’ve got a dysfunctional system where different silos, with different statutory powers and responsibilities, control different transportation modes.
Light rail IS a cheaper alternative elsewhere, where proper financing techniques are used. Up here though it is crushingly-expensive. You appear absolutely oblivious to that reality . . . don’t feel bad, the other “transit advocates” who post in this neck of the wood share with you that massive blind spot.
There is a light rail construction project that is well underway down in the Portland area that is in several ways comparable to East Link. Planning for it began after the East Link planning commenced. It will be in operation in 2015, though:
http://www.progressiverailroading.com/passenger_rail/news/TriMet-marks-oneyear-milestone-for-PortlandMilwaukie-lightrail-bridge--29298
Sound Transit won’t even BEGIN construction of East Link until 2016 (at the earliest), and the plan for opening it to service recently was pushed back by three years (until 2023).
Here is some information about that new light rail line TriMet is building out, which includes a new multi-purpose bridge across the Willamette river:
http://trimet.org/pdfs/pm/PMLR_Fact_Sheet_February2010.pdf
Part of what that document says is this:
“Project funding
“Project costs are approximately $1.4 billion. The Federal share is expected to range from 50 to 60 percent ($710 to $850 million) of the total costs. To date, $412.5 million in local, regional and state funds have been identified for the project.”
That’s how all the peers finance light rail – it is an example of light rail being built out that is dirt cheap for the people it will serve. Those government heads line up large federal grants to pay for most of it, then they tap other sources that DO NOT include massive new regressive tax hikes.
The people in and around Portland that have been getting light rail build-outs for the past several decades have not paid ANY new local taxes for their transit. Sound Transit has hauled in something like $5 billion in regressive tax revenue so far, and the bond sale plans would put people on the hook for perhaps $85 billion over the next forty years.
If you continue to ignore the aberrant financing practices employed by our unaccountable taxing district Sound Transit then your posts will continue to read as if you are completely uninformed about fiscal realities.
Posted Sat, Dec 31, 8:18 a.m. Inappropriate
This piece, of course, was written before our November elections. As it happened, two School Board incumbents were defeated. We shall have to see if their replacements perform more ably than the rejected incumbents. The change, in any case, reflects a healthy public desire for School Board accountability. The City Council and Port Commission incumbents were reelected. The Council, in particular, will need to display even greater independence and initiative in 2012 as it copes with a mayoral agenda without any apparent basis in economic or fiscal reality.
Thanks to crossrip for his/her continuing knowledgeable comments on transportation issues. We really do need to examine options and priorities more closely before buying into big capital projects with onerous down-the-road costs.
Posted Mon, Jan 2, 11:52 a.m. Inappropriate
It is encouraging to read that Mr. Van Dyk interprets the results of the school board election as a demonstration the public's interest in holding the board accountable. That strikes me as a valid interpretation. It would be good for some other voices, such as Mr. Brewster, Ms Korsmo, and Ms Morris, to consider the validity of this perspective.
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