I hear that the earth will lose 80% of the oxygen in its atmosphere if I-695 passes. Is this true? My source is Luke Burbank, producer of the Kirby Wilbur show. If this is true, then I must vote "NO".

I wish the yes side had more money - I think some commercials mocking the extreme, dire consequences of 695 is in order.

Keep the faith. We will win this one.

God Bless,

Jim Claussen Bellevue

-- Jim (james@kvi.fanz.net), October 22, 1999

Answers

Mr. Bellevue

You are making this up right? As I heard that it was 80% of the atmoshpere not just the oxygen. There won't be a ozone hole as there will be no ozone (won't have to worry about tires craking anymore) and we will all have to dress like Arab women when we go out side.

I wish I had more money - I think I could come up with more mocking and extreme examples of the doom and gloom crowd.

Ed Bridges West Richland

-- Ed (ed_bridges@yahoo.com), October 22, 1999.

The simple fact is that I-695's arbitrary figure of $30 will wipe out the state's fourth largest source of revenue. A charming and eloquent guy called Tim Eyman wants you to believe that this will have no effect. What on earth could have led you to fall for what he says?? The No side has provided plenty of detailed evidence to show just how much effect it WILL have. Tim Eyman has provided NO evidence to refute what they say.

In his sales talk for I-695, he provides very few statistics, but he repeats them over and over until the people who are not listening too carefully come to think that they are true. Over the last few weeks, I've been taking a closer look at those statistics. EVERY one of them is either a lie, or an irrelevant figure that seems to have been carefully selected to deceive voters into drawing a false conclusion.

-- Joe Campbell (joecampbell76@hotmail.com), October 22, 1999.

"The No side has provided plenty of detailed evidence to show just how much effect it WILL have. Tim Eyman has provided NO evidence to refute what they say."

Joe, I believe you views are very one-sided. From what i have seen, both sides leave a lot to be desired on the side of honesty. Oh, and i must say....... they usually dont say "effects it WILL have", but rather they say "effects it MAY have." I try to stay objective and listen and research both sides of an arguement. You should try to do the same, it is an eye-opening experience.

-- Allan (ae_me@yahoo.com), October 22, 1999.

Joe--"The No side has provided plenty of detailed evidence to show just how much effect it WILL have."

I've a request. Please visit the the metrokc website and read their position paper on I-695, I appreciate it if you'd look especially carefully at their "analysis" leading to the oft-quoted 70000 additional cars/day. You can then perhaps help me understand why I shouldn't find the above statement ironic.

Jim Lynch of "The Seattle Times" has written a couple of columns that deal with this very issue--the misleading nature of the statistics promulgated by the no965 camp. Specifically, he addresses the "1000 lost cops" and the "$6B lost transportation" stats. WRT fairness, he seems relatively unbiased as he has taken Tim Eyman to task as well.

-- Brad (knotwell@my-deja.com), October 22, 1999.

I have been looking critically at both sides. Here's my general impression.

The people presenting arguments on the No side consist of many, many groups, most of them quite well-informed. It's hard to make an overall statement about their "honesty," because there are so many of them. Still, in general, most of their reasoning is based on facts that can quite easily be verified at authoritative sources of info on the web. In most cases, the worst criticism that can be made of their estimates is that they are only first-guess estimates, and don't take into account that it MAY be possible for them to arrange things so that the impacts are SLIGHTLY lower, IF they are able to reorganize their operations for greater "efficiency", which they MAY be able to do over a matter of several months or years.

(In my opinion, it is honest of them to NOT pretend that they can reorganize for greater efficiency. Many people are fond of saying things like, "If I was in charge, I would spend this money better than these govt agencies are." They don't realize that it is not as easy for government organizations to reorganize as it is for private industry -- even if they want to. Because they are spending public money, not their own money, they are subject to far more legal controls and restrictions on the way they operate than private industry is. For them to come up with "better" estimates than they have, would probably take much more analysis and solicitation of public input than they have time to do before the Nov. 2 election. They do have other things to do before then!)

The Yes side is much easier to evaluate for honesty, because the arguments are coming almost entirely from a single person - Tim Eyman - and he has put out very few statistics - the "6th highest taxed state," "2% of government spending," "$500 million," "$30 puts us in line with what other states charge," and "$1 billion surplus".

Of these 5 figures, EVERY SINGLE ONE is either a lie, or a misleading figure that seems to have been carefully, cleverly and deliberately chosen to DECEIVE voters into drawing a false conclusion. I say "carefully" and "deliberately," because they have been chosen even though they are clearly irrelevant figures, and other, more relevant statistics are readily available.

My favorite one is the oft-repeated "MVET revenues are only 2% of government spending in the state." The unspoken implication is that an MVET cut will cut state-funded services by only 2%. But as a recent newspaper letter put it, notice how he cleverly avoided saying, "state government spending?" He's including federal, county and city spending too! For things to be cut by only 2%, all of the city water and waste utilities in the state, WSU, the post office, the US Navy, etc. etc. would all have to cut back their Washington operations by 2% and donate to our gutted transportation budget! Does Tim Eyman really think that's going to happen?? Yeah, right. Why even mention the 2% figure then, unless it's a deliberate attempt to deceive?

It is absolutely true that Tim Eyman has provided NO evidence to refute the warnings provided by the No side. His rebuttals consist almost entirely of empty statements such as, "Don't be fooled! They're just trying to scare you! They're tyrranical politicians and government agencies looking out for their own interests!" etc. - all remarkably successful attempts to divert attention from the fact that he HAS no answer for the No side's facts.

It is truly impressive how many people have fallen for the deceit of this charming, eloquent and shameless con man from Mukilteo.

-- Joe Campbell (joecampbell76@hotmail.com), October 24, 1999.

QUOTE "It is truly impressive how many people have fallen for the deceit of this charming, eloquent and shameless con man from Mukilteo."

The reason most people I talk to are voting for I-695 has nothing to do with Tin Eyman. In my office I have talked with 30 people and 25 are strongly in favor of I-695. The number one reason given is that the MVET is extremely unfair and there is no confidence that the situation will change unless it is passed.

-- Jim Dunn (JLDunn@home.com), October 24, 1999.

Many people, on both sides of the I-695 issue, think that the MVET is arbitrary and unfair, and ought to be reformed. But that's not necessarily the same thing as I-695, although a con man named Tim Eyman has cleverly manipulated people into believing that it is. It's unfortunate that so many well-intentioned people have confused the MVET issue with I-695. It's not necessary to inflict so much damage on the state in order to reform MVET.

The problem with reforming MVET through I-695 is that it offers no way to make up for the sudden drastic funding loss. It ought to be plainly OBVIOUS to everyone that this omission will cause serious problems - except that Eyman has done such an excellent job of clouding the issue. (The point about the "$1 billion surplus providing a buffer" is a complete sham, as we all know by now.) It will cause immense waste - disruption to projects that are already under way, layoffs and re-hires, etc.

One of the most unfortunate pieces of waste, I think, will be the wasted time of the people in public service, people who are genuinely interested in serving the public, who will have to spend several months making the tough choices that Tim Eyman doesn't care a hoot about.

Notice that Eyman himself has cleverly avoided mentioning ANY programs to cut as a result of funding loss. Making tough choices is not his problem! All he does is deny, deny, deny that any damage will be caused, laugh at the sincere warnings about the damage that will be caused, and encourage others to laugh with him. By leaving the tough choices to someone else, he can claim credit for "saving people from the tyrranical politicians who don't care one ounce about the average taxpayer," and blame someone else for each piece of damage that his pet project will inevitably cause.

Somebody with Tim Eyman's persuasive skills ought to use them to promote a hard-to-sell cause that would genuinely benefit the public, instead of misleading the public for his personal entertainment.

-- Joe Campbell (joecampbell76@hotmail.com), October 24, 1999.

Joe--"The people presenting arguments on the No side consist of many, many groups, most of them quite well-informed. It's hard to make an overall statement about their "honesty," because there are so many of them. Still, in general, most of their reasoning is based on facts that can quite easily be verified at authoritative sources of info on the web. In most cases, the worst criticism that can be made of their estimates is that they are only first-guess estimates, and don't take into account that it MAY be possible for them to arrange things so that the impacts are SLIGHTLY lower, IF they are able to reorganize their operations for greater "efficiency", which they MAY be able to do over a matter of several months or years."

This is crap and you know it. In the case of Metro, they took a their estimated percentage budgetary reduction and multiplied it by their riders/day.

Explain to me how this is a first guess estimate. This is an extremely naive worst guess estimate that I could've poked holes in when I was a high school sophomore. Given its obvious naivete, why do you suppose they chose it (BTW: I agree desperation to "get something out" is a possible answer)?

Off the top of my head, here's some questions they could've addressed:

1) targeted reductions at routes/schedules with low ridership

2) probability that people will adapt (in the event of a cut) to the new routine (ie drive to a nearby park'n'ride as oppposed to walking to the bus stop down the street)

3) impact of fare increases to offset funding. From the studies I've seen so far, there is good evidence to show transit usage for *work* commutes is inelastic.

Are these difficult questions to answer? Probably, but it's unlikely there isn't (given Metro's size and funding) someone who could answer them with a reasonable amount of research.

Put simply, they're attempting to frame the debate in their favor. I don't blame them for this. That being said, I wouldn't expect them to blame me if I think their stats are horses***.

-- Brad (knotwell@my-deja.com), October 24, 1999.

Brad, I spent several hours working with Metro transit planners this summer on plans for improvements to a particular bus route, and I think you're taking a rather idealistic view of the way they work -- just as I did when I started working with them. You're thinking about how they would work if *you* or *I* owned and operated them. If they were a private company, they could probably come up with estimates of how they would revise their timetables a lot more quickly. Unfortunately, they *don't* work the way they would if they were a private company -- not necessarily because of incompetence or dishonesty, but because they're not *allowed* to.

"Answer these questions ... with a reasonable amount of research" is the important point in what you said above. It's a lot more research than you might think. Metro has only 12 transit planners responsible for 1,300 buses on 230 criss-crossing routes, and they have been hard at work doing that research ever since I-695 got on the ballot. (In fact, they have been doing nothing else -- take a look at http://transit.metrokc.gov/bus/bulletins/east/east2000_suspend.html, " Executive suspends process for Eastside transit changes planned for 2000.") They are *required* to solicit public input before making changes to any bus route, to give every side a fair chance to comment, and to present all of the resulting input as legal evidence to support their decisions about the changes they make. They also have union contracts with bus drivers that require the timetables to be fixed at least 4 months in advance, which further crunches the time that they have to make all these decisions.

I have the impression that you would like their service changes to be guided by a policy of maximizing passenger-hours. Unfortunately, I've informally heard that their service changes are not going to be based on maximizing passenger-hours, but rather on "sharing the pain equally" among all *geographic* areas of the county. This may seem arbitrary to you, and it does to me as well; but the way to fix it is to fight for their policies to be changed, not to cut their funding.

All of these procedures seemed incredibly lengthy and bureaucratic to me; but I did not get the impression that any of the people I worked with were arrogant, unresponsive, incompetent, out of touch with people's needs, etc. etc. On the contrary, I got the impression that they were intelligent, articulate, responsive, and very knowledgeable about riders' needs. They could probably get higher paying jobs in private industry, but were doing what they did because they were committed to improving transit. I imagine the same applies to officials in other government agencies. The blame for bureaucracy lies with the system, not with the people implementing it. We have charged these public officials with a very difficult task -- that of running the system "democratically" -- and the bureaucracy is the price we pay for demanding democracy. (Private industry faces no such problem!) If we want things to run more efficiently, the thing to do is to fight for changed policies, e.g. empower them to make quicker decisions in certain types of cases. I-695 doesn't empower them to make any changes in their policies. All it is is a *funding* cut. That will not make their service planning more efficient; all it will do is make them work slower on future plans, since they will have less staff.

Until they've done all of this analysis, the most honest thing that they *can* say is what they've said on the web page that I think you're referring to (http://www.metrokc.gov/kcdot/out/I-695DOT.htm), which is "Between 800,000 and 1.3 million hours of bus service could be eliminated, depending on specific service program choices and changes to the paratransit program and fares. That represents about 30 percent of current service levels. On AVERAGE, a 30 percent reduction in ridership would result in 25 million fewer annual riders, 83,000 fewer weekday riders and 23,000 fewer riders during each days afternoon commute period." I agree with you that 30% lost in service hours will probably be something less than 30% lost in passenger hours - since most buses will probably get more crowded - and they should probably have said that it will be "somewhat less" - but they have no basis yet to tell how much less. Many buses may actually get *less* crowded, because people tend not to want to wait for buses when they are less frequent. Worse yet, wait times for transfers will be lengthened when buses are less frequent, and that will be a further factor that will *strongly* discourage bus ridership. If a bus rider is taking a single bus, he can shorten his wait by consulting the timetable and showing up just before the bus does; but he can't do anything about his transfer time. It's not so easy to estimate the effects of all these factors. The web page mentions an "estimated 70,000 added cars per day" without an explanation of how the estimate was arrived at, but there isn't cause to believe that they were trying to be dishonest.

In any case, even if Metro's numbers aren't accurate yet, the point is that a 30% funding cut, even if it doesn't impact passenger-hours by as much as 30%, will absolutely, certainly have a huge and drastic impact, any way you slice it -- there is no doubt about that. (And yes it is a 30% funding cut, at least until a whole lot of fighting over funds in the legislature is completed; public funds aren't as easy to reallocate as private funds are.) The same goes for other MVET-funded programs hit by I-695.

-- Anirudh Sahni (anirudhsahni@hotmail.com), October 24, 1999.

Joe "Many people, on both sides of the I-695 issue, think that the MVET is arbitrary and unfair, and ought to be reformed. But that's not necessarily the same thing as I-695, although a con man named Tim Eyman has cleverly manipulated people into believing that it is. It's unfortunate that so many well-intentioned people have confused the MVET issue with I-695. It's not necessary to inflict so much damage on the state in order to reform MVET."

I don't think the anti I-695 folks realize the frustration people have with this tax. We vote in democrats then we vote in republicans and nothing happens. Finally we get to vote on the tax directly ourselves and now the governor says they will look into it if we just vote it down. Are you really surprised that the majority don't believe it? Did the politicians think this would go on forever? Now that we are ready to repeal this tax all we hear is how harmful it is going to be for the state. Didn't they know 2 years ago that this tax would soon be repealed if they did not modify it? I cannot imagine that they are so naive to not have made contingency plans before this late date.

I believe most people think that the governor and representatives are so out of touch with the average taxpayer that this initiative is the only way. Our representatives have done nothing to convince us otherwise. In fact right after the Governor made his speech indicating that they would look into the MVET next year, members of both parties were saying that they did not know if he could get them to agree on anything.

All of the statistics and numbers you and other well meaning anti I- 695 folks quote just make people angrier that something was not done sooner and they have to use the initiative process this way.

-- Jim Dunn (JLDunn@home.com), October 24, 1999.

Anirudh--"Unfortunately, they *don't* work the way they would if they were a private company -- not necessarily because of incompetence or dishonesty, but because they're not *allowed* to."

Your name is familiar. . .did you have a letter published in "The Seattle Times?"

Other than a startling argument for privatization what's your point.

"I have the impression that you would like their service changes to be guided by a policy of maximizing passenger-hours. Unfortunately, I've informally heard that their service changes are not going to be based on maximizing passenger-hours, but rather on "sharing the pain equally" among all *geographic* areas of the county. This may seem arbitrary to you, and it does to me as well; but the way to fix it is to fight for their policies to be changed, not to cut their funding."

In a rational environment, what other criteria would there be? I must admit I'm wrong about one thing--my presumption that transit mgmt's primary concern was fare revenue and ridership numbers. If what you're saying is true, they're simply trying to cover their a** and refusing to make any difficult decisions. Again, another good argument for privatization.

"All of these procedures seemed incredibly lengthy and bureaucratic to me; but I did not get the impression that any of the people I worked with were arrogant, unresponsive, incompetent, out of touch with people's needs, etc. etc."

Imagine my surprise when I saw this statement since I've never used any of the words you used--arrogant, unresponsive, incompetent or out of touch--to describe any person working for any government agency (much less metrokc). Be careful with your presumptions. . .

"The web page mentions an "estimated 70,000 added cars per day" without an explanation of how the estimate was arrived at, but there isn't cause to believe that they were trying to be dishonest."

Nor is it a reason to put *any* credence behind the (oft-quoted) number.

FWIW, I enjoyed your post quite a bit.

-- Brad (knotwell@my-deja.com), October 25, 1999.

You're all missing the point. A YES vote on 695 is NOT a vote for removal of ANY funding from police, transit, fire departments, sales tax equalization, etc. It's a vote to limit the growth of government spending, effectively lowering this biennium's growth from 9% down to only 5% or 6% or 7%, depending on how you want to cook the numbers.

The voters have a right to expect their responsible elected officials to re-arrange the pots of money they draw from such that the LEAST important programs are cut, NOT the ones the voters have repeatedly ordered them to fund first.

By making rash, threatening statements predicting dooom and gloom through funding cuts to important programs and critical services, the no695 side is clearly stating that our elected officials are so irresponsible, corrupt, and incompetant that they will, out of sheer spite and malice, stick it to their constituencies by cutting things their constituents clearly DON'T want cut!

Of course, it will take a few months for our hard working legislature to do the difficult work of re-allocating available funding from their pet 'pork' projects to those more important, critical programs the no side is gnashing their teeth over. During the interim, the surplus/rainy day fund/whatever you want to call it, can easily be 'borrowed from' (not used without puttng the money back) to keep things going until the new funding priorities are passed into law.

-- Tom Evans (evans_tl@hotmail.com), October 25, 1999.