Broback's Blog

I’ve been an off and on financial supporter of TCC for years. (I will admit that I’m “off” at the moment thanks to their inane support of Proposition 1.) Their heart has generally (in the past at least) been in the right place — diversification is inherently a good thing, and the more ways we have of getting around the better. Admittedly, their recent stance which is so absolutely aligned with the developer community has me wondering though…

For some reason, KIRO TV (by far the best TV news coverage in Seattle IMHO) is picking on them because they took money from Sound Transit. What — they’re supposed to say “no” when ST whips out the checkbook? Seems pretty obvious to me that the one and only culprit here is ST.

My jaw nearly hit the floor last year when I heard on some radio station say “this traffic report is brought to you by Sound Transit…” I thought it was lunacy that my tax dollars (intended to help all of us commute) were being spent on radio advocacy. Apparently the performance of ST is not enough to keep us feeling positive about their work, they have to “sell” us with our own money!

Before this story broke I was fantasizing about legislation making it illegal for ST to spend one penny on advocacy. The problem is that our legislators have largely been “captured” by the industry, and it’s a pipe dream that such a bill would ever even make it to a vote.

So, KIRO — you guys are godlike to be chasing this story, and keep hounding ST to stop them from wasting our money (and corrupting the process), but leave the radio stations and other innocent recipients of these checks alone.