Monorail foes pick up more I-83 signatures

By Susan Gilmore
Seattle Times staff reporter

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That gives sponsors a total of 37,542 signatures, more than double the 17,229 valid signatures needed to win a place on the November ballot.

Officials from the King County Elections Office hope to validate the signatures by Friday. If approved, I-83 would block or revoke city permits to construct the planned $1.75 billion Green Line linking Ballard, Seattle Center, downtown and West Seattle.

In other developments, the Monorail Recall campaign last week filed a complaint with the state Public Disclosure Commission (PDC) asserting that the Seattle Monorail Project is illegally using public funds to fight its initiative.

"It is our understanding that public agencies are prohibited from using public funds for political purposes, that is to campaign for or against an initiative or other ballot proposition or candidate," attorney Glenn Amster said in his complaint to the PDC. "Yet the Seattle Monorail Project has spent ... hundreds of thousands of dollars in the preparation and prosecution of two lawsuits challenging Initiative 83."

He said that while it might be appropriate for public agencies to defend themselves in court, as the state has done with various tax and fee-cutting initiatives sponsored by Tim Eyman, the Monorail Project's "aggressive litigation" against the ballot measure is inappropriate.

Anne Levinson, deputy director of the Seattle Monorail Authority, called the complaint "a little bit silly."

"It's well within the authority of government to challenge initiatives when they affect the public purse and when they're so clearly, as this one is, outside the bounds of what's appropriate for an initiative process," she said. "It's our responsibility to challenge the efforts to derail the project."

The PDC said it will review the complaint to see if it has merit.

There's still no guarantee the initiative will appear on the ballot. The Seattle Monorail Project, with pro-monorail environmentalists and landowners, is continuing to fight the measure with lawsuits.

One suit asserts that city-issued permits to build the monorail are land-use decisions that cannot be overturned by an initiative. The agency is also trying to void the first 9,600 initiative signatures because they were collected before a judge reworded the petitions for greater clarity. That complaint is heading to the state Court of Appeals.
 
Elections officials have been instructed to keep separate tabulations of signatures under the original and the reworded initiative.

Susan Gilmore: 206-464-2054 or sgilmore@seattletimes.com