For monorail board

The Times endorses Goldberg, Stockmeyer

The public is allowed to choose only two of the nine seats on the Seattle Monorail Authority. Our choices on this limited menu are Beth Goldberg for Position 8 and Cleve Stockmeyer for Position 9.

Each race has its big thinker, its rescuer and its terminator. The big thinker is a visionary. The rescuer is an incumbent who wants to save the project by cutting costs. The terminator wants to end it. The big thinkers here are Stan Lippmann for Position 8 and Dick Falkenbury for Position 9. Falkenbury, the eloquent and impatient outsider who thought up the monorail, now argues that the board needs to go back to his original vision. Lippmann is a rail believer who would like to build a mag-lev system. We endorse neither, on the ground that this project needs no more dreamers.

We believe the monorail's plight is probably fatal. Beth Goldberg thinks so, too. She is a budget analyst for King County. She is well-spoken and knows the meaning of numbers — and they tell her that the monorail is too expensive. "This is the wrong project for Seattle," she says. "We need to use our very limited tax dollars in more productive ways." The people need to elect at least one "terminator" to bring a skeptical voice to monorail board meetings. The "no" candidate with the surest footing is Goldberg.

Unfortunately, Goldberg's win would knock out the least subservient of the incumbents, Cindi Laws. She voted against the pay raise for former Executive Director Joel Horn and showed loyalty to the public when monorail brass asked the Legislature to approve 50-year bonds. But Laws is still for rescuing this $2.1 billion project, and is running against the strongest challenger. We endorse the challenger.

Position 9 presents a more difficult choice. The "terminator" in this race is Jim Nobles, who supervises a facility for alcoholics and sits on the King County Mental Health Advisory Board. Nobles agrees with our position on the monorail but strikes us as neither articulate nor forceful enough to do much about it.

That leaves the incumbent, Cleve Stockmeyer, a lawyer who is bright, knowledgeable and well-spoken and who for most of the past two years was a Horn loyalist. Stockmeyer wants to save the project and yet says, "I don't think I'm a solid yes vote."

He is also for democracy: He pushed to make the two seats elected and favors expanding the elected seats to a majority. Unlike Falkenbury, who opposes another public vote, Stockmeyer says he is not afraid of it. On his assurance that he will not cut out the public — and the hope that he sees with a more skeptical eye — we support him again.