This piece quotes Richard S. Davis:

Diluting executive authority, however, frustrates accountability. Moreover, it allows special interests an inordinate influence on offices that matter mightily to them, but receive comparatively little media attention or public scrutiny.

I agree with that assessment. One of the pernicious effects of diluting a governor’s executive authority is to give special interests an easy way to ensure state regulations favor them over the public’s interests.

This phenomenon is not limited to state governments. There’s a really egregious example here of special interests controlling a local government to the detriment of the public. It’s a particularly noxious situation because the government involved is one over which people can not exert any political control.

For several reasons that seemed important at the time, when Sound Transit’s enabling statutes were drafted in 1992 a primary goal was ensuring the boardmembers would remain unaccountable to the public via political means. That’s why that government’s structure has no elected executive, and why it features a legislative body completely controlled by political appointees (15 of the 18 board seats).

Sound Transit’s structure was set up differently than how other local governments in this country were configured. Problem is, that sausage that emerged from Olympia in 1992 does not comply with what the federal constitution requires. State legislatures act beyond their legal authority when they delegate policy-setting powers to local municipal corporations with appointive boards. The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees Americans the right to vote both for and against local government policy-makers, and the folks in Olympia flouted that limit when they enacted the statutes codified as Ch. 81.112 RCW.

Anyone disagree? It would be great to discuss this with somebody willing to try arguing Sound Transit’s “no executive and appointive legislative board” model complies with the constitution’s guarantee to us of our right to vote for and against local government policy-makers.

Wow !
So if the governor had more power she would have done a more effective job holding down State expenditures and bucking her own patrons ? I don't think so !
Unfortunately our State has plenty of Bullies in office. Between the governor, the majority leaders in the Legislature, the bosses of the public employee unions, and a desert of media dissent, we are doomed no matter how centralized the power is.
Seattle is a great example. They eliminated the independent ombudsman, and treasurer. They have the City "PDC" incorporated as an unelected political appointee. The City records which used to be in the Public Library were brought into the City government library where they can be "safeguarded" for the public good. Neighborhood and community organizations used to be vibrant alternatives to City Hall press releases. By the time of the Mayor Royer Administration, those too were effectively neutered by the creation of a City "Office of Neighborhoods". Rather than (as claimed) enhancing localized debate, the infusion of public funds made the future "activists" nothing more than soldiers for the central authorities.
The lessons go on and on.
Due to its intrinsic nature as a one party system, Seattle's government has reached levels of obfuscation and duplicity reminiscent of the robber machines of the late 1800s and early 20th Century. The State Government itself is nothing less than an expression, an extension, of the myopic views of Puget Sound political fashion. Its actually pitiful to watch.
So no, centralizing more power in individuals and smaller groups will not improve outcomes. It will just further fog the lens of public scrutiny and allow crazy crap to pop into existence with even less unbiased analysis than we have today. We will end up with more palaces and monuments to the government itself. Kleptocracy .....
Jsa

"The City records which used to be in the Public Library were brought into the City government library where they can be "safeguarded" for the public good. "

The correct story is even worse: The Public Library had a special division of the library within the old Municipal building where both the public and the city staff were royally serviced by the outstanding librarian and staff that comprised "The Municipal Reference Division, Seattle Public Library.

I have lost track of the responsible parties, but the librarian was recalled to the main library along with part or all of the collection which rapidly diminished there while in open stacks! At some point what was left was placed in the more secure Seattle Room of the new library where the former Municipal Librarian can also be occasionally found.

What the City of Seattle "safeguarded" for the public good within its own bowels, I know of no one persistent enough to have gained access to it. In other words, access is definitely not something proudly shared as was the outstanding Municipal Reference Division that also functioned as a de facto auditor—probably a consideration in its demise.

I would go further.

Remind me again of the vital functions of the Lt. Governor.

What policy does the State Treasurer make? Why does this need to be an elected office?

We have just witnessed the disastrous results when the Attorney General disagrees with the Governor (and the legislature) and goes off creating controversy and staking out policy ground of his own. Do we really need that?

Let's just have two state-wide elected offices: Governor and Auditor.

The governor has adeptly evaded all accountability on education. Not because the OSPI wasn't cooperative, but because the legislature failed to meet their responsibility to fund it and because the media never demanded any accountability for her multiple blue ribbon committees that all failed to deliver any results.

Any ballot postmarked on or before Election Day should be counted. There is no practical reason we need to know the winner of any election the very next morning. It may be frustrating for the media, but this is no reason to disenfranchise any voter. If we have t wait a few days to find out who got elected dogcatcher, it's a small price to pay for democracy.

Regardless of any deadline on when ballots should be received, the actual election results should be sequestered until all the ballots in a given race have been counted.

The current process where ballots are counted and reported in batches over the course of several days just encourages speculation in high-stakes races that some election officials in some counties are fudging the numbers based on earlier reporting in other counties.

Make everyone 'show their cards at once.'

In general the state and county governments do a poor job of representing the real interests of their population...so the issue is not more power, but better representation.

The current arena fiasco is a case in point where the King County Council completely collapsed and failed to look at regional options like Renton, Bellevue, and my proposal to use the Tacoma Dome.

This rubber stamping leaves the 3 million Western Washintonians and 6 million state residents essentially unrepresented in the face of the Seattle centrists, whose goal seems to be to put the entire population into 3 square miles of its own downtown with 450 story towers and 5 level deep tunnels.

Christine Gregoire is a republican posing as a democrat always in bed with big business. She'll coddle liberals and make promises, but her loyalty is to the elite business community, especially Washington State Highway Department pricks in suits. She'll be remembered for historic criminal incompetence.

Powerful? I would settle for one not owned by sovereign tribes and public employee unions.

Blue Light -

I admire that you never miss a beat. The sound of one hand clapping.

If you look under your bed the 'tribes' and 'unions' are hiding in your toy chest.

Always the 'tribes' and 'unions', excellent cut and paste skills Sir! I salute you!

WHAT IS IT ABOUT DEMOCRACY THAT YOU FOLKS DISLIKE?

As far as I can tell, your complaint is that it does not represent your point of view.

FACTUAL ERROR:

"For several reasons that seemed important at the time, when Sound Transit’s enabling statutes were drafted in 1992 a primary goal was ensuring the boardmembers would remain unaccountable to the public via political means. That’s why that government’s structure has no elected executive, and why it features a legislative body completely controlled by political appointees (15 of the 18 board seats)."

This by a post above.

FACT: Of the 18 members of Sound Transit's Board, 17 (SEVENTEEN) are Elected Officials!! The 18th is Paula Hammond, Director, DOT.

You are entitled to your own opinions. You are not entitled to your own facts.

Ross Kane
Warm Beach

Ross Kane points to a completely irrelevant fact when he announces breathlessly: “Of the 18 members of Sound Transit's Board, 17 (SEVENTEEN) are Elected Officials!!”

The relevant fact is that only three of Sound Transit’s boardmembers are elected directly to that board (the three county executives). The rest are appointed.

It does not matter from a legal perspective that 14 of the 15 political appointees comprising that board were elected to other offices. The reason that fact does not matter is because the US Constitution guarantees to Americans the right to vote for the legislators who set the local government policies to which we are subject. That legal principle was reiterated by the US Supreme Court in the1967 opinion _Sailors v. Kent Bd. of Education_. In that opinion the court describes how it is unlawful when a state legislature delegates too much discretionary governmental power to an appointive-board entity. That is exactly what our state legislature did when it ginned up the RTA enabling legislation in 1993.

Here’s the thing Ross doesn’t seem to get – that constitutional limit on state legislatures (e.g., they can’t delegate legislative authority to appointive local boards) does not contain a loophole if the appointive board has a bunch of people on it who had been elected to executive and legislative offices of other local governments.

Dear Crossrip,

So it its so CLEAR to you, no doubt it will be just as clear to the State Supreme Court?

Probably not. You'd lose.

Or run an initiative? You won't. You'd rather complain.

Best of luck.

Ross Kane
Warm Beach

So it its so CLEAR to you, no doubt it will be just as clear to the State Supreme Court?

You are correct, there is no doubt about that Ross.

In this state the lawyers and judges -- and most of the top government and business managers -- know Sound Transit has an unlawful structure.

I have a question for you, Ross. Why wouldn't the supreme court hold Sound Transit is unlawful? We never have had the right to vote for the policy-setters comprising its board. Old-Metro was struck down as unconstitutional in 1990, under the Fourteenth Amendment, because it was not structured in a way that provided voters with enough power to select its legislators.

. . . So Ross, I understand you were a Snohomish County Councilman in the early 1990s.

You suggest a lawsuit challenging the structure of Sound Transit on constitutional grounds would be doomed to failure. Do you believe that the US Constitution's guarantee to Americans of our right to vote for local government legislators does not apply to Sound Transit for some reason? Or are you suggesting that the justices would act dishonestly, and put Sound Transit above the law? Your comment is ambiguous -- it could mean either of those things.

We get the kind of government and governor we elect. Only an idiot believes that more power overcomes incompetency, look at Congress.

Crossrip,

I realize you have a low opinion of my intelligence. Fine, you are entitled to your opinions. But I did take an oath to defend, protect and abide by the US Constitution and the Constitution of the State of Washington - and I never did - and still do not - take that oath lightly.

And once again, you cherry pick your facts.

I was present at the conceptual creation of Sound Transit in 1992. There were concerns about the governance of Sound Transit, particularly in light of the - then - fairly recent controversy regarding METRO and the King County Council. The issue was discussed and debated.

You would agree that under our system of government, the PEOPLE are Sovereign?

The people created - and elected the Legislature. The Legislature first defined the Charter and the scope and the taxing authority of Sound Transit. But that's all the Legislature did. The counties
negotiated within the framework defined by the Legislature and entered into reciprocal MOU's.

However, Sound Transit exists today, and operates on the principles that it does, because of a VOTE of the PEOPLE in 2008.The people approved it's charter, its scope of work and granted it certain tax revenues consistent with the limits set by the peoples Representatives in the Legislature. Go back and re-read what YOU voted on, if you live in a benefit area that had a right to vote in that election. There-in lies the tale.

Ross Kane
Warm Beach & The Snohomish County Council, 1990 - 1993

Ross Kane
Warm Beach

You would agree that under our system of government, the PEOPLE are Sovereign?

No I would not agree with that. Take statewide initiatives as an example. Voters have the right to act as a legislature for the state and enact new laws for Washington. However, the state and federal constitutions limit legislatures – even when it is the people acting as a legislature. For example, I-695 was approved by the people at a general election, but that legislation was struck down as unconstitutional (it violated the “single-subject” limit of the state constitution).

In the same way that initiatives approved by the people can be unconstitutional, statutes the legislature enacts also can be unconstitutional. That’s the problem with the statutes the legislature passed in 1992 giving Sound Transit both an appointive board and powers to establish its local laws.

However, Sound Transit exists today, and operates on the principles that it does, because of a VOTE of the PEOPLE in 2008. The people approved it's charter, its scope of work and granted it certain tax revenues consistent with the limits set by the peoples Representatives in the Legislature.

That assertion about the source of Sound Transit’s governmental powers simply is not true. None of Sound Transit’s powers are derived from any votes of the people. The people of the Sound Transit taxing district have no right of initiative with respect to that local government (unlike our right of initiative to create new state laws). Even if the people wanted to grant powers to Sound Transit we could not. It was the state legislature and the state legislature alone that delegated a slew of powers to Sound Transit.

What you appear not to understand is that even if Sound Transit is working within the scope of the 2008 ballot measure that fact does not cure the constitutional flaw. The constitutional flaw with Sound Transit’s structure is very similar to the flaw that caused old-Metro to be struck down as unconstitutional in 1990. That local government had been operating around here with an unconstitutional structure since the late 1950’s. Old-Metro had been operating in a manner consistent with what its voter-approved ballot measures called for though. Obviously that kind of compliance with local laws did not cure the constitutional defect with old-Metro’s enabling statutes stemming from how the state legislature set it up with a structure that violated voters’ protected rights. It’s the same with Sound Transit – voter approval of its ballot measures does not cure this kind of constitutional flaw.

Under the US Constitution people are guaranteed the right to vote both for and against local government policy-makers. That constitutional guarantee operates as a limit on state legislatures: they can’t delegate substantial legislative powers to local municipal entities with appointive boards. That constitutional limit on our state’s legislature did not disappear, or somehow become ineffective, merely because voters approved a Sound Transit ballot measure. There’s a principle called the hierarchy of laws, and it means that local government ordinances, whether they are approved by voters or not, can not trump or weaken limits on state governments imposed by the constitution.

Here’s the relevant legal issue: either the state legislature delegated too much policy-setting authority to RTA boards, or it did not. That kind of issue is the one described in the 1967 _Sailors v. Kent Bd. of Education_ opinion. In the words of that opinion, Sound Transit indeed does have an unlawful structure because it has an appointive board that possesses powers that are “legislative in the classical sense”. In contrast, the only kinds of powers a state legislature can constitutionally delegate to a local appointive board are those that allow it to engage in “essentially administrative functions”. Sound Transit’s board sets its own, new policies – it does not merely administer plans enacted by the state legislature.

Ross Kane notes this:

I was present at the conceptual creation of Sound Transit in 1992. There were concerns about the governance of Sound Transit, particularly in light of the - then - fairly recent controversy regarding METRO and the King County Council. The issue was discussed and debated.

Here’s how that discussion had to have gone down:

Jay Reich and Gerry Johnson said: “We just got slammed in court for running an unconstitutional government around here for 35 years. Old-Metro operated in violation of the US Constitution’s guarantee to people in the Puget Sound region that they must be able to vote for and against their local government legislators. So we’ve got a new idea. We’ll create a bigger, more powerful local government and we’ll give people less direct voting rights over the legislators – this time they’ll only get to directly elect 3 of the 18 boardmembers!”

So Ross . . . is it true that at the conceptual creation of Sound Transit in 1992 nobody asked the one logical question: “Hey wait a minute, not giving people enough direct voting rights over legislators is unconstitutional, so shouldn’t we give them more of those voting rights?”

. . . Incidentally, I certainly do not have "a low opinion of [Ross Kane's] intelligence." His postings in this thread do focus on irrelevant facts though, and he's failing to recognize the constitutional limit on state legislatures that is the means by which the US Constitution guarantees Americans our right to vote for local government legislators.

I'd like to see the clutter of judicial candidates handled by those in that profession. To have the general public decide these positions is ridiculous. At the very least, they should be narrowed down to two by those in that profession. Another change I'd like to see is more positions decided in the primary. For instance, the two legislative candidates in my district got over 70% of the votes in their respective races, yet the opponent remains on the ballot for the general election. What a waste of time and resources. Also, it would be helpful to know which races are decided, e.g. some of the judicial races, when the results of the primary are reported, e.g. on the state's website and the various media that cover elections.