Ron Sims hopes to ride light rail to election win

By Eric Pryne
Seattle Times staff reporter

THE SEATTLE TIMES Ron Sims, Sound Transit board chairman, announces federal funding for light rail in July 2003.

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"I am the Sound Transit guy," the King County executive acknowledges.

For two critical years, while the agency struggled to regain trust, rehabilitate its image and salvage its endangered Seattle light-rail project, Sims was Sound Transit's board chairman, voice and face.

He debated. He negotiated. He lobbied. He proselytized. Almost every time Sound Transit made news in 2002 and 2003, Sims was there.

Now, as he campaigns for the Democratic nomination for governor, Sims is betting his close association with Sound Transit will help him more than it will hurt.

Some observers expected Sims would downplay the connection. "I think there's still a pretty widespread perception out there that it's the gang that couldn't shoot straight," says independent pollster Stuart Elway, who conducts surveys for The Seattle Times.

Instead, Sims, who is no longer chairman but remains on the board, is celebrating his Sound Transit ties. He transformed the agency, his campaign Web site and brochures proclaim; he brought light rail back from the brink.

Sound Transit broke ground on the line last fall after badly needed federal funding was restored. Backers and detractors of the project agree that if Sims hadn't exerted his considerable influence, that might not have happened.

Sims says his leadership of Sound Transit shows he's willing to take chances and take charge, someone who knows how to get things done.

Courage or missed chance?

"I thought he was courageous at the time for taking it on," says Dave Earling, a Republican and former Edmonds city councilman who preceded Sims as Sound Transit's chairman.
 
"I'm going to do the same thing with the state of Washington," Sims vows.

But critics contend Sound Transit isn't different now — just slicker. By sticking with light rail despite compelling arguments to switch to other kinds of transit, they say, Sims missed an opportunity to display real leadership.

"He was the only one who could have turned it around," says former Gov. Booth Gardner, a fellow Democrat and outspoken light-rail foe.

Shoreline City Councilwoman Maggie Fimia says Sims fronted for powerful interests — contractors, consultants, bond lawyers, unions and environmentalists — who wanted light rail built no matter what. Fimia is a Democrat and longtime Sims adversary who once favored light rail but now is a leading opponent.

Sims, Elway and Republican pollster Bob Moore don't expect Sound Transit will make or break Sims' bid for the Democratic nomination against Attorney General Christine Gregoire in next month's primary.

Statewide, they say, it's not that big an issue.

But recent polls suggest King, Snohomish and Pierce county voters' perception of Sound Transit may be more favorable than it has been in years. Democrats apparently are especially supportive: Those with a favorable impression of the agency in one survey outnumbered those with an unfavorable view, 58 percent to 23 percent.

Those numbers may provide a clue about the Sims campaign's decision to embrace Sound Transit, says Moore, who is advising GOP gubernatorial hopeful Dino Rossi.

With the demise of the state's blanket primary, fewer independents may vote in September. "Right now, Ron Sims is running a campaign to capture the Democratic vote," Moore says. "I think, for the primary, it's a smart move."

Sims agrees Sound Transit is an asset to his campaign, not a liability. "People are saying, 'You took a lot of hits, but you never withdrew your support,' " he says.

If he moves on to the general election, though, Republicans may offer a different spin.

"Most voters in the state think Sound Transit is a boondoggle and a waste of money," says state GOP Chairman Chris Vance. "Ron's aggressive, unflinching, uncompromising support for Sound Transit defines him as a big-government liberal."

An architect of the agency

Sims began shaping Sound Transit's policies and projects long before he became its chairman in January 2002.

He's one of its longest-serving board members, joining months after voters created the three-county agency in 1996 and approved its plan for light rail, commuter rail and express buses.

He has handpicked a majority of the other board members; by law, each county executive appoints his county's other representatives. King County holds 10 of the 18 seats.

Shortly before he became chairman, Sims removed Metropolitan King County Councilman Rob McKenna, R-Bellevue, one of the board's few light-rail foes. Critics said Sims wanted only yes-men; Sims says he wanted different voices and a board that worked together better.

Sims was a key player in the big decisions on the Seattle light-rail project, and he usually got what he wanted. In 1999, for instance, Rainier Valley was sending Sound Transit conflicting signals about whether to build the line through the neighborhood in a tunnel or on the surface.

Sims and then-Mayor Paul Schell proposed the plan the board eventually approved: a surface route, sweetened with a $50 million community-development fund.

Agency hits a low point

Like most other board members, Sims dismissed critics' warnings in 2000 that the project, then planned as a 21-mile line from the University District to SeaTac, was dangerously over budget. When the agency admitted big cost overruns that December, "to say that I was a little stunned is understated," he says now.

The board decided to scale back the project. Sims proposed the alignment it ultimately adopted in late 2001: a 14-mile line from Westlake Center to Tukwila, with buses and trains sharing the downtown transit tunnel.

Around that time, Earling's two-year term as chairman was coming to a close. Under the rules, his replacement would come from King County.

Sound Transit was just starting to dig its way out of disaster. "We couldn't get any lower," Sims says.

The agency's biggest problem: After a critical auditor's report, the federal government had withdrawn $500 million promised earlier for light rail. Without that, the project couldn't be built.

Sims had just been re-elected county executive in a landslide. He says other board members told him Sound Transit needed someone with his political heft in charge, but he vacillated, largely because of the risk to his political career.

"If this agency fails, it's over for me," Sims remembers thinking. "I finally took it because I believed in the project."

Earling says some board members wondered if Sims would have time for the chairman's job, but their fears quickly evaporated. Sims estimates he devoted one-third of his work hours to Sound Transit during the two years he ran the board.

He portrays his time at Sound Transit's helm as a period in which a troubled agency righted itself and began delivering projects, not just plans. Under his leadership, he says, the board took control back from the staff. Relations with partner agencies and companies improved.

"There needed to be a change in the culture of the agency. I was willing to force changes and take the hits for it," Sims says.

"He did a good job in cleaning the agency up," says Richard Borkowski, president of pro-rail People for Modern Transit, and a Sims supporter. "They were difficult to work with. Today, it's very different."

Sound Transit's short Tacoma light-rail line opened on Sims' watch. The agency negotiated a long-delayed deal with Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway that allowed commuter rail between Everett and Seattle to finally start running last December.

And — the capstone — the Seattle light-rail project fought its way back into the federal government's good graces.

Efforts drew criticism

But critics say that when it should have been reassessing everything, Sound Transit under Sims bulled ahead with old projects of dubious value. They point to Everett commuter rail, which will cost more than three times as much as the agency originally estimated. Ridership has fallen far below projections.

Fimia says Sims had the stature to persuade Sound Transit to discard the Seattle light-rail project and invest the money in transit that would carry more people for less money. Instead, she says, he pushed the project through not on its merits, but with political sleight-of-hand and public-relations tricks.

"He pulled out all the stops," Fimia says. "It reminds me of the Wizard of Oz — you know, 'Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.' Moving lots of knobs and dials and spending lots of money, but very little to really show for it."

Light-rail foes are particularly incensed at Sims' repeated assertions well into 2003 that Sound Transit could extend light rail north from downtown to the University of Washington without asking voters to raise taxes.

Sims now admits it can't be done. He and transportation aide David Hopkins say some of the assumptions they made about construction-cost savings, the timing of an economic recovery and potential changes in Sound Transit's financial policies didn't pan out.

Fimia and others say it never was possible, and that Sims knew it.

Sound Transit critic Emory Bundy has speculated Sims said it could be done to keep influential groups such as the Downtown Seattle Association and Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce from turning against the agency.

"They kept showing us information that made it appear possible," says chamber President Steve Leahy. "If we'd known that you can't get north without another vote, it probably would have affected our position.

"But I don't know that it would have been the straw that broke the camel's back, that would have sent us bolting in the other direction."

Sims was tenacious and persistent in promoting Sound Transit and light rail, Leahy says. Sims says he would bring those qualities to the governor's mansion.

Speaking in the third person, he says his accomplishments at Sound Transit reveal much about him: "He's thick-skinned. He's focused. He's determined. He has political skills. And he can get it done."

Will voters buy that?

"If people think Sound Transit is really going to happen and be a good thing, then it's going to help him," pollster Elway says.

"If people think it's still floundering, it's going to hurt him."

Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com