Locke 695 pledge too little too late SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD Tuesday, October 19, 1999

Gov. Gary Locke's timid tiptoe into the Initiative 695 fray is at best too little too late. At worst, it bolsters pro-695 cynicism about government.

Locke should have stepped forward publicly and repeatedly back when the signatures were being sought, and offered bold and definitive opposition to the proposal and a credible alternative. Instead, he waited until a few weeks before the election with what I-695 proponents gleefully dub a "Hail Mary" pass. Simmering and hardly secret resentment over the license tab tax boiled over into more than a half-million voter signatures on petitions to put I-695 on the Nov. 2 ballot. Political leaders in Olympia, including the governor, gave the initiative drive short shrift. They apparently dismissed the prospect that the same electorate that approved Referendum 49 and its attendant list of demanded transportation improvements would be foolish enough to turn around a year later and strip the funding source for those transportation projects.

Standing on a no-new-taxes platform, Republicans proposed R-49 in 1998 as an alternative to Locke's plan to generate money for transportation improvements by increasing the state gas tax by 11 cents over five years. The Republicans' R-49 and Locke's gas tax hike included about $100 million in license tab tax cuts.

And even though Referendum 49 was the brainchild of Republican legislators, the Republican Party Central Committee recently elected to support I-695. In a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, state Republican Party Chairman Dale Foreman says of Locke's new promise to do something about the license tab tax, "It's not leadership; it's governing by polling."

Locke, at least, has the political courage to challenge I-695's "meat ax" method. Locke sees the looming prospect of I-695's passage and says, in effect: This is a bad idea; give us a chance to come up with something better. For Foreman, it's apparently enough if the people want it, and sound transportation funding policy (even the Republicans' own policy) be damned.

The paucity of leadership is appalling.

And even when Locke does step up at this late, late date, he offers nothing specific -- no tax cut figure; no suggestion of how to make the tax more "fair."

That's it? Locke gives the voters no alternative to I-695 more specific than "vote no and trust us to fix it later"?

I-695 author Tim Eyman couldn't have written a better script for Locke to follow. The governor's tepid move at this late date appears more an act of desperation than of leadership

Ed - even the P.I. is wondering about Locke's motive

-- Ed (ed_bridges@yahoo.com), October 19, 1999

Answers

Gee, Ed...

The PI's editorial sounds an awful lot like what I wrote here a few days back. Something MUST be wrong when I agree with the PI.

Westin

"Sometimes, you never fully face up to things that you ought to face up to."

Source: "'Numbness' Let Gore Accept Tobacco Help," San Francisco Chronicle, August 30, 1996

-- Westin (86se4sp@my-deja.com), October 19, 1999.

"even the P.I. is wondering about Locke's motive " No they aren't. Nobody has any doubts as to his motive. He hoped it would just go away. It didn't.

-- Mark Stilson (mark842@hotmail.com), October 19, 1999.