Developer boosts aid for anti-monorail campaign

By Mike Lindblom
Seattle Times staff reporter

Martin Selig's donations may pass $200,000.

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And he isn't done yet.

Selig will probably surpass the $200,000 mark this month, he said yesterday when asked about new disclosure reports for Initiative 83, which seeks to ban city permits for the proposed Green Line through Ballard, downtown and West Seattle.

The reports, filed late Tuesday, also show increased payments to professional signature gatherers, a departure from the group's origins this spring as a purely volunteer effort.

Martin Selig Real Estate paid $73,380 to Citizen Solutions of Lacey, Thurston County, one of two firms hired, and paid travel and lodging for out-of-town signature gatherers. Selig donated attorney fees, parking for I-83 volunteers, clerical help and the time that security guards in one of his buildings spent collecting signatures. In all, he represents 91 percent of the initiative's $192,337 total.

And that's before the real campaign begins.

Before reaching voters in November, the measure will have to survive a lawsuit by the Seattle Monorail Project (SMP) and its backers that attempts to void all I-83 signatures gathered before June 18 — the day a judge rewrote the ballot title to make the wording more clear.

Selig predicted that if the initiative reaches the ballot, funds would pour in from downtown businesses to support it.

The measure, nicknamed "Monorail Recall," raked in more money than the Sensible Seattle Coalition, which received $154,390 for its winning measure in 2003 that requires Seattle police and the city attorney to consider marijuana offenses the lowest law-enforcement priority if the marijuana is for "adult personal use." But I-83 comes nowhere close to Neighbors for Libraries, which collected $482,964 in 1998 for its successful measure to fund a new downtown library and branches.

Peter Sherwin, a sponsor of two previous pro-monorail campaigns, portrays the I-83 tactics as a distortion of the political process.

"I think you should treat a bought-and-paid signature campaign differently from one that relies on grass-roots volunteers," he said Monday before the City Council, which is scheduled to forward the initiative to the Nov. 2 ballot.
 
"Be careful, because it's going to be very hard to get anything done in this city if this initiative goes forward," Sherwin said. According to Liv Finne, the I-83 treasurer, volunteers have collected 16,745 signatures, compared with 20,797 from paid firms, for a total of 37,542.

"Forty-five percent — that's pretty damn good — and we're still getting them in the mail," she said.

The measure needs 17,229 valid signatures from Seattle voters, but King County election workers have found enough of them invalid that I-83 would not qualify for November's ballot if the SMP wins its suit in September.

In that event, monorail opponents would go back to the streets for more names and seek a ballot spot early next year, said Finne.

Paid signature gatherers have stirred controversy in other states, where skeptics argue there is potential for abuse.

Groups who hire the firms reply that nobody is forced to sign.

"We couldn't do it in six months with volunteers, because everybody has jobs," said Finne. "We are grateful to him (Selig), because he has created this opportunity for Seattle citizens to pass judgment on this deeply flawed project."

Mike Lindblom: 206-515-5631 or mlindblom@seattletimes.com