Seattle and Auburn Mayors Move to Hamper Sound Transit

More Blue State Governance Failures

While failures of blue state governance continue to push working class voters into the arms of MAGA, I recently learned about another way that ineffectual politicians in the Seattle region like Mayors Nancy Backus of Auburn and Bruce Harrell of Seattle are doubling down on keeping the dysfunction in place.

Trevor Reed reached out to me to discuss some of the problems that bedevil Sound Transit’s ability to deliver projects in a timely and reasonably-priced manner. He is a management consultant that works on public sector transportation projects, and happens to also live in the Seattle area.

He recently wrote an informative piece in The Urbanist about the ways Sound Transit is trying to unshackle itself so it can be more effective in delivering projects on time and close to budget.

But it turns out that Bruce and Nancy would prefer that it does not.

The heart of the matter that Mr. Reed discusses relates to the patchwork of permitting processes in the dozens of jurisdictions Sound Transit serves. While variation certainly adds time and expense, his core argument seems to be that local cities are set up with powers that empower them to set up extraction rackets, where they hold Sound Transit and the region hostage until they can bilk it for all its worth.

Some of these cities greedily thwart the will of regional voters, withholding permits and demanding local extras (even road widenings!) that have nothing to do with the project. Each jurisdiction knows some of the other jurisdictions will do so, so they all have an incentive to join in the ugliness.

A functional agency would have power to preempt this, with an external source of accountability. Alas, we don’t have that here. (I have written about similar “collective action problems” before—these are a sure sign its time to preempt local control.)

Trevor’s article gets into the details, and into the ways in which Backus and Harrell are trying to stop Sound Transit from becoming an effective, efficient deliverer of public goods. It’s a little wonky, but if you want to understand one of the big reasons why Sound Transit seems so bad at getting this stuff done, this one is worth your time! He is constructive as well, pointing toward some solutions that have worked for other agencies.

Also, the next time that Bruce Harrell says we don’t need to raise taxes because government is wasteful, remember that he is on the side of fighting for “betterments” (the extractions) and delays that add up to billions or tens of billions in wasted taxpayer money.