$201 million later, the Mercer Mess will still be a mess Crosscut, WA - May 29, 2008 To be fair, he did give us the EMP (260 million), the Cinerama Redo (12 million) and Union Station redo (17 million... oh wait, Sound Transit re-embursed ...

Sound transit fighter plane sculpture in trouble? Seattle Post Intelligencer - 20 minutes ago Email kerymurakami@seattlepi.com In an email circulating on the Web, the sculptor proposing chopped up jet fighters at Sound Transit's future Broadway light ...

See the article by Hunter George of the News Tribune:

House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler told The Daily World, the newspaper in Aberdeen, that she has no plans “now or ever” to endorse fellow Democrat John Ladenburg’s campaign for attorney general.

That’s because he continues to diss her open-government bill that would require local governments to record their executive sessions. The Pierce County Council was fine with it, but lots of other local governments weren’t, so the bill died.

“Local governments are, obviously, still afraid of my bill even now and are trying to come up with every kind of excuse possible to avoid it,” said Kessler, D-Hoquiam.

Local governments afraid of tape recording their executive sessions. That can’t be good.

And remember, John Ladenburg was Sound Transit Chair when the agency’s furtive behavior prompted the Washington State Legislature to create a new law to notify people when agencies are planning to act to take their property.

Ladenburg still defends Sound Transit’s extreme behavior in that matter, and is not supportive of increased government transparency.

Ladenburg was also one of the chief architects of the enormously bloated Sound Transit/Proposition 1 tax proposal that failed in fall 2007, reportedly because taxpayers weren’t able or willing to pay the huge additional cost in taxes.

Is that the recipe for a “people’s advocate” (Attorney General)?

Reporter Larry Lange at the Seattle P-I reports that the Washington State Auditor’s Office is going to conduct, among other things, and audit of Sound Transit to see whether:

• “Whether its publicly disseminated financial information can be understood and is useful.

• The audit also will examine whether its public meetings are convenient for citizens and how “transparent” the agency is.“

Here are a few answers to those questions:

1. Public meetings of the Sound Transit Board are held in the afternoon (4pm) when most people are at work and unable to attend.

Usually the bulk of the people who attend these meetings are:

* paid contractors and consultants who make their living off of Sound Transit’s public funds,

* city representatives that support light rail alignments that bring said tax dollars to their respective cities,

* elected officials whose future candidacies and fundraising abilities depend on appearing to go along & get along with large public agencies such as Sound Transit,

* developers and property owners who would directly benefit from the accompanying land use upzoning (increase in allowed development density) along proposed light rail corridors (see Martin Luther King Way South), and

* a handful of regular citizens and/or agency critics attending in order to speak to the Sound Transit Board.

2. The public is usually instructed that they can only speak about “action items” on the agenda for discussion and direction on by the Sound Transit Board that particular day, by which time, a citizen has little or no impact on the thinking of Board members or the process.

3. Transparency-hmmm. The smallest request for information can result in a redirect to the public information officer, who then requires citizens to ask for information through a public disclosure process which can take weeks or months.

4. Sound Transit routinely cherry picks their result-driven (push) polls & surveys to their desired outcome, and then proclaims broad support for light rail tax packages that is tenuous at best.

5. This is the public agency that hid information (buried so deep in a website) regarding taking the Miller property in Tacoma, that the Washington State Legislature later hastened to create a NEW LAW to protect home and property owners, and REQUIRE Sound Transit to at the very minimum to NOTIFY people by certified letter when they were about to take their property. Does that seem voluntarily transparent?

Does this behavior bleed over into the usefulness or accessibility of the financial information that they provide to the public? Very possibly.

Lange reports that Mindy Chambers, spokesperson for the state Auditor’s Office, says that her office gets more questions about the Seattle-based agency (Sound Transit) “than pretty much anything else.“

Create a roads wish-list, Rep. Larsen says HeraldNet, WA - 7 hours ago Sound Transit officials are considering a smaller package for transit projects only to be put on the ballot this fall, but the proposal already is facing ...

Deal signed to start Snohomish-Bellevue commuter train runs Seattle Times, United States - 12 hours ago By comparison, Sound Transit currently has 9300 riders on commuter trains linking Seattle with Tacoma and Everett. Peter Camp, the county's executive ...

Snohomish-Renton rail link takes shape HeraldNet, WA - 7 hours ago He estimates carrying 10000 riders a day within five years -- which rivals the 9300 riders carried a day by Sound Transit's Sounder trains. ...

The standard toll on the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge will rise by $1 per crossing – $4 for drivers who stop to pay at a toll booth and $2.75 for motorists who have electronic Good To Go toll collection account.

The new tolls will take effect July 1.

The Washington Transportation Commission approved the increase tonight after a two-hour meeting in Gig Harbor. The standard toll is for a two-axle vehicle. Toll charges actually are by the axle, so large tractor-trailer rigs will have to pay as much as $12 at a booth or $8.25 if equipped with a ...

Q&A | Rough concrete paving and disappearing crosswalk stripes Seattle Times, United States - May 26, 2008 Sound Transit's light-rail stations and plantings along MLK Way have changed the area. But for the hundreds of millions of dollars spent, Central Seattle ...

For whatever preconceived ideas policymakers might have about trends and tendencies among state ferry riders, there's nothing like a survey of 26,000 riders to iron out misconceptions.