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Friday, October 24, 2003
White House sides with light rail plan
Could it be that we're really going to build a transit system here? Credit the Bush administration for sticking with light rail, although the impetus may have come from the political wing of the White House.
Even if the motive had more to do with Bush's re-election than Seattle's transit system, it's remarkable that it took such high-level intervention to settle the partisan bickering within the state delegation, ending what Democratic Rep. Norm Dicks called "one of the toughest fights that I can remember in my 27 years on the Appropriations Committee." Republican Rep. Jennifer Dunn collaborated with fellow Republican Rep. Ernest Istook of Oklahoma in an attempt to scuttle the $500 million grant that Bush's Federal Transit Administration had approved for Sound Transit's light rail project.
Istook's capitulation to the White House was not absolute. He placed three conditions on approval of the current $75 million appropriation. Sound Transit officials say those conditions can be met in time for the FTA to sign the grant agreement as early as today.
There is at least one other shoe yet to drop, of course, and that's the Washington Supreme Court's long-awaited ruling on the validity of Initiative 776, which could gut about 20 percent of Sound Transit's overall funding. Agency officials say they could still build light rail, but we're not comfortable with that prospect.
And even Bush's chief political adviser Karl Rove can't sway the justices, so the region must wait a bit longer to really begin building a transit improvement more than 35 years overdue.
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