As promised
earlier this post details Attorney General Ferguson’s office response to the
below email:
Dear Attorney
General Ferguson,
As your office
suggested the Sound Transit Lead Legal Council responded to my concerns about
their apparent failure to comply with RCW 81.104.00 (2) (b) regarding planning
for their light rail spine. Does your office concur with the following
response?
Project
level reviews are not subject to the requirements in RCW 81.104.100. As noted
in your complaint, the project level review of the East Link project did
include a no-build option. Your presumption that this was due to the
requirement in RCW 81.104.100(2)(b) is not correct. As indicated above, this
statutory requirement applies to system-wide plans, not project level reviews.
Sincerely,
Bill Hirt
I received the
following response from the Attorney General’s office.
Dear Mr. Hirt:
Thank you for your
recent e-mail to the office of the Attorney General regarding Sound Transit RCW
compliance.
As stated in my prior
correspondence to you on March 5, 2009, March 17, 2009, September 26, 2011 and
December 26 2014, regarding Sound Transit, our office does not advise or
represent regional transit authorities, nor does our office have the role of
supervising or correcting the activities of such authorities. Furthermore, I previously pointed out
that we are not in a position to provide legal advice or representation to
private citizens. The authority of
our office may be found in RCW 43.10.030 and RCW 43.10.040.
Sincerely,
BRYCE E. Brown
Senior Assistant
Attorney General
The earlier
letters were Attorney Brown’s response to my concerns Sound Transit had
“deceived” voters with claims in their 2008 DEIS that East Link was the “equivalent
of up to 10 lanes of freeway” across I-90 Bridge. That WSDOT lawyers had
“misled” a federal judge, citing a 2004 FHWA ROD as justifying the claim the
R-8A configuration allowed center roadway be used for light rail despite the
fact the ROD required maintaining center roadway lanes for vehicles.
That Sound
Transit had made a mockery of environmental laws when they told the FTA and
FHWA that light rail noise would have no impact on Mercer Slough park while
committing to spend millions shielding properties hundreds of feet away and
across a major roadway.
While I never
asked for any legal advice or representation, Brown’s response raises the
question as to who is responsible for “supervising or correcting the activities
of such authorities” when it comes to complying with the Revised Code of
Washington. An earlier complaint
to the Attorney Generals office merited the following response:
Dear
William James Hirt,
Thank
you for contacting the Consumer Protection Division of the Attorney General’s
Office. Your complaint has been reviewed and it was determined that the issues
presented are under the regulatory authority of another agency. Your complaint
has been closed accordingly.
We referred your
complaint to the following agency. Please contact the identified agency
directly with questions about the status of your complaint.
Sound Transit Board of
Directors
c/o Board Administrator
401 Jackson S
Seattle, WA 98104
Thus at least the
Consumer Protection Division in the Attorney General’s office thought “someone”
should respond. The fact they
chose to assign that responsibility to Sound Transit is like asking the “fox to
protect the chicken house”. Even worse, Sound Transit’s
failure to consider “low cost” options will be exacerbated by their failure to
recognize the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel limitations on capacity,
trivializing any congestion improvements and wrecking havoc on any cost/benefit
analysis for not only East Link but the entire light rail spine.
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