Over the top with monorail

Monorail's deadline is coming. In the end, the monorail board will be stuck with the three obvious alternatives: Shorten the line, increase the tax or scrap the project.

Kevin Phelps, the former Sound Transit finance chairman, has been hired to assess the Seattle Monorail Project. Phelps has looked hard for places to cut. One such place is the 2,500-year earthquake standard, which requires concrete supports in the Sodo area to reach more than 200 feet deep. Another such place, says Phelps, is the agency's borrowing program: It had planned to borrow most of the money up front, which costs more than selling its bonds "just in time."

These sound like good ideas. But Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels should show some skepticism to the newcomer who breezes in, quickly reviews nine months of other people's work and, without peer review, begins suggesting changes to a voluminous, detailed business contract.

Phelps is not a lawyer. He is not a budget analyst. His degree from Washington State University was in journalism, and by trade he is a politician.

In arguing that car-tab tax collections will grow at 6.1 percent rather than 4.4 percent, he argues that more older people will be buying cars in the future. Maybe so — but a forecast cannot be validated by anecdote.

What Phelps offers is a political push — yet one more validation of the single-track dream. He is leading a high-risk, follow-your-emotions charge into the machine guns of financial reality. Nickels should think twice before he goes over the top.