Roads + Transit = ‘Nonsense on Stilts’ Squared, Cubed or Worse
Few
elements of
the
Roads
+
Transit
package are
entirely
logical
– since so little is in fact to be completed – but when Sound Transit’s
always-devious planning process is hog tied to the Regional Transportation
Investment District’s
floundering, in recent
years, the
shot-gun wedding forced by the state Legislature, in 2006, is not merely ugly. Roads + Transit, as proposed, yields the “nonsense on stilts” derided by Sir Jeremy Bentham 200 years ago.
To
start, Sound Transit builds its slick-willy financing on smoke-and-mirrors –
yet again.
In
order to ensure that a light-rail spine can reach no farther
north than Lynnwood, and no farther south than Fife,
Sound Transit is proposing a very
deceptive 20-year financing plan (instead of 30 years required to fund
light-rail service from Everett
to
Tacoma). However, Sound Transit’s latest shell
game rests on floating
$9.8 billion in 30-year bonds so that its thus-misleading 20-year plan allows
tax collections for 30, 40 or even 50 years!
In
order to avoid completing the light-rail spine from Everett to Tacoma promised to limit traffic on Interstate 5 – which MIGHT actually do something to
decrease congestion
as Sound Transit’s “Master Plan” has claimed for over a dozen years –
that
enormously
expensive
agency is planning to jam a light-rail spur just far enough to the east to mess up freight mobility in the pivotal
Interstate 90 corridor, totally, adding huge delays for trucks delivering
perishable fruit, other agricultural products and manufactured goods to the Port
of Seattle from eastern Washington, but not far enough to connect with Redmond’s central business district, much
less with any parts of Kirkland, Bothell,
Woodinville or Issaquah.
Why would Sound Transit suggest such “nonsense on stilts” for its second “ST2” phase – now – after its first “Sound Move” stage turned out to be a fiasco, if not an outright fraud, costing taxpayers twice as much to fund only about half of the light-rail service promised?
The answer is
simple: If Sound Transit calls its “ST2”
dodge a 20-year plan, then it can identify
tax costs for only two decades, sell that much-smaller number to voters, but float 30-year bonds – and, depending on when debt issues, rake in taxes for up to half a century. Stated gently, Sound Transit’s so-called “ST2” phase
has a 20-year
scope largely so it can intentionally scam taxpayers in 2007 – once again – precisely as it misled voters in 1996.
Sound
Transit’s brazen
uses of financial misrepresentation to con citizens in King County, Pierce County and Snohomish County
were exposed by state Supreme Court Justice Tom Chambers as a highly “clever
manipulation,”
in Sane Transit v. Sound Transit, 151 Wn.2d 60, 104
(2004),
and
were
condemned
by
Justice
Richard
Sanders’
dissent,
there, forcefully stating “it is not our
role to help Sound Transit railroad the voters.” But past chumping of us all fades before the utter financial irresponsibility urged by the Regional Transportation Investment District (with its “RTID” acronym most
properly pronounced as “RIP-OFF”).
RTID
proposes
$6.7
billion for highways from $8.2 billion to be collected over
20
years
in taxes and in tolls
– and
from $6.2 billion more in reckless
borrowing!
Such misuse of debt to bunch most construction, over the
first few years, also needlessly
drives costs up! Thus, Sound Transit’s misdeeds, and even $124 million entirely wasted on monorail, pale before RTID’s “nonsense on
stilts” so squared, cubed or raised to a 4th-or-5th
power!
For
further information, write Box 99, Kirkland
98083,
or
email
TruthinTaxation@aol.com.