No wiggle room for Sound Transit on I-776

Initiative 776, offered in 2002, was Tim Eyman's second attempt at $30 vehicle tabs everywhere in Washington. It passed, and in 2003 the Washington Supreme Court accepted it as valid law. The court needs to take one more step, which is to apply the law to Sound Transit in the manner now suggested by Attorney General Rob McKenna.

The situation is this: The vote of the people to repeal the car-tab tax came three years after Sound Transit had signed a contract pledging a 0.4 percent car-tabs tax, and a 0.3 percent sales tax, as security for $350 million in bonds. Under the Constitution, neither the Legislature nor the voters can retroactively change a bond contract. Sound Transit argues that therefore it can ignore I-776 and collect its share of the car-tab tax indefinitely, including pledging it for the sale of new bonds.

In a brief mainly written by James Pharris, senior assistant attorney general, the state argues against this. Sound Transit, the state says, must follow the law to the extent that it can, which means using the car-tab money only for repayment of the old bonds. After that debt is satisfied, it must end the tax because it has no legal authority to collect it.

Apparently, no Washington court has ever made an order like this. It is necessary here, otherwise a law passed by the people and validated by the court will be tossed aside like a gum wrapper, and we arrive at a point at which the people cannot repeal any tax.

This page did not endorse I-776, but the voters did, and the court should not allow the only noncomplying agency in the state to wriggle out of it.