Proposition, Indeed

Decisive as ever, King County Executive Ron Sims a few days ago told the Seattle Times "I'm neither going to support it nor oppose" Prop 1, the $(insert your guess here) November roads and transit levy. Today, in a guest column in the Times - rather than in an announcement to the electorate - Sims outs himself as "a ‘no' vote."

Oh well, we're all confused about Prop 1 and while the polls show it may pass, support is fading for the muddled measure. No one, absolutely, can tell you the proposal's exact cost. As the P-I pointed out this week, estimates range from $18 billion to $160 billion.

The truth lies somewhere in between. Now go vote. 

In part, it's the old monorail debate: Should you factor in all those real and potential financial and interest costs beyond construction? The failed "$1.6 billion" Seattle Popular Monorail Project quickly became unpopular when the P-I ran a 2005 headline, "Monorail's building, debt costs balloon to $11 billion." (Seattle Weekly three months earlier revealed the cost could be more than $6 billion, which monorail officials pooh-poohed as "a worst-case scenario").

The usual counter argument is that citizens don't include financing costs when they say they just bought a $400,000 home that in reality would cost $1 million over 30 years of payments, so why should the government announce such costs?

Well, if the government was going to eventually sell its project and recoup our money - rather than pay it to the end and most likely continue the tax that is supposed to therein end - that would be fine. That's not the deal, and the public is getting the message as the media increasingly includes true project costs in news stories, a la the monorail, or Paul Allen's $1 billion stadium.

Unfortunately, the P-I might have blown an opportunity on its roads/transit story. I'd like to have seen the reaction to this headline: "Prop 1's building, debt costs balloon to 14 times the monorail's tab!"