Sound Transit Car Tab Fee Lies Continue

The Seattle Times Feb.14^th headline, “High court backs Sound Transit on car tabs” is just the latest example of their abiding if not abetting Sound Transit lies about car tab fees.

It began with a Sound Transit 7/8/2016 post entitled: “ST3 plan would cost typical adult $169 annually or $14 per month”.

It included the following:

Here’s how much a typical adult would pay if ST3 is approved:

MVET

An adult owning the median value motor vehicle would pay an additional $43 per year in MVET if ST3 were passed. The updated calculation reflects an annual median value $5,333 of vehicles in the Sound Transit District. MVET taxes are determined by a state of Washington depreciation schedule for a specific vehicle’s model and production year. The previous calculation relied on a less representative average vehicle value of $10,135 for the more expansive tri-county area, for a significantly higher annual cost of $78 per adult. 

Yet the Times abetted Sound Transit's response to voter complaints, an April 2017 post headlined “Sound Transit 3 car tab rollback threatens light rail to Everett”:

During the campaign, Sound Transit was completely transparent about the taxes. We all knew that our car tabs would increase a lot in 2017 to help fund Sound Transit. So when the first invoices arrived, the vast majority of people just paid their tabs. But a vocal minority, with big tabs from expensive cars, took their displeasure to Olympia, hoping that the Legislature would listen to their stories and disregard the will of the people.

Sound Transit clearly lied about what car tabs would cost and then lied about lying.  While the decision only deals with whether the car tabs were constitutional the Sound Transit lawyer Desmond Brown argued, “The case is of enormous consequences”.  He told the court, “The loss of MVET revenue will represent a loss of between $15 to $18 billion in revenue needed to finish the system”. 

However Sound Transit’s 2019 Budget depicting 2017-2041 tax revenue shows MVET approximately $350 million annually until 2028 at which time it drops to $200 million gradually increasing to $300 million in 2041.  The total MVET fees from 2020 to 2041 when the extensions are compete is only about $6 billion.  That’s out of the 2019 budgets expectations for $64 billion in taxes for 2017 to 2041, presumably “needed to finish the system”.  Yet the Times abides Brown’s claim “we either have to eliminate or even substantially delay a number of major projects”. 

Browns claims I-976 doesn’t force any tax cut because Sound Transit already pledged car-tab revenue to pay off construction bonds.  Yet Sound Transit’s 2019 Budget depicting Debt Capacity shows a “Principle Balance on Tax-Based Debt” of only $6 billion with no plans to increase until 2023.  That “debt service payments” in the Expenditures chart averages $100 million over the next ten years.  That’s out of yearly budgets that average more than $3.5 billion for the decade.  

The bottom line is ST3 would probably never have been approved is Sound Transit had not lied about their cost. They followed that by lying about lying.  Now, at least by their own 2019 budget, they’re lying about what I-976 will cost them, its impact on schedules and their ability to fund bonds.  

But then Sound Transit has spent the last ten years lying about the ridership of Prop 1 light rail extensions routed through the DSTT,  They've compounded that mendacity by planing to use the extensions to replace bus routes into Seattle rather than Increase transit ridership.  Northgate Link operation next year will demonstrate the impact of those mendacities dwarfs car tab fees lies and will likely make them moot.  

Until then the Seattle Times, who have abided if not abetted those mendacities, should stop and urge the Supreme Court allow I-976 to proceed.