After four hours of recess, closed-door meetings and rumors of reversed positions, the Metropolitan King County Council voted Monday to do what its members proclaimed they would last week: Increase car-tab fees $20 to spare bus-service cuts.

But before the 7-2 vote, delay and drama made bus advocates nervous.

During the long recess, council members said Jane Hague and Kathy Lambert, the suburban Republicans who announced their support for fee increases last Friday, were reconsidering after they were lambasted by constituents over the weekend.

Indeed, after the vote, Hague said she and Lambert had received a death threat.

But Hague and Lambert offered a different reason for the four-hour holding pattern. They were caught up in a technical snafu. The changes and efficiencies in Metro service they sought, in exchange for their votes, were presented as legislative motions, not as binding amendments to a proposed law.

"The paperwork wasn't quite the way we wanted," Lambert said.

Hague said that created "a little bit" of a trust issue with Democratic County Executive Dow Constantine and council Democrats.

Hague said she and Lambert did not try to negotiate further demands or extract other favors from Constantine on Monday.

Council elections are officially nonpartisan, but members caucus and frequently vote along party lines.

Council members had two choices for enacting the two-year fee: a supermajority of the nine-member council could impose them; or a simple majority could vote to put them on the fall ballot.

Once the new legislation was drafted, the council took the supermajority route, with Republicans Reagan Dunn and Pete von Reichbauer voting no.

"I don't like or support the process of forcing a tax increase" on people, Dunn said, "especially in a down economy without a vote of the people."

Von Reichbauer struck a similar chord, saying Hague and Lambert had produced a better policy in their deal with the Democrats, but the process of bypassing voters was flawed.

"If the package is so good," von Reichbauer said after the vote, "why are we denying the public the right to vote?"

Councilmember Bob Ferguson noted the council routinely approved increased fees, from sewer rates to fees for death records, without sending them to voters.

But von Reichbauer said this case was different. Car-tab fees had been reduced statewide by ballot initiatives. To increase them without a ballot measure is "flying in the face of what people wanted," he said.

Von Reichbauer also sounded a caustic note when he read a public statement by one of his colleagues, saying "I will not take a councilmanic vote to raises taxes. Voters in this state have made it known through the initiative process that they wish to cap car tab fees."

He didn't name the colleague, but it was Hague who had made the statement in her newsletter to constituents earlier this year.

Both Hague and Lambert said they switched their positions because the changes they negotiated were worth it.

Those include: phasing out the free-ride zone in downtown Seattle; running lower-cost, smaller buses on less-popular routes; and providing $24 in bus tickets to people who pay the car-tab fee — and allowing people who don't want those tickets to donate the value to a pool of human-service agencies that would distribute them to the needy.

Councilmember Julia Patterson noted that the proposed cuts in bus service would have put a lot more cars on the road. "This fee will help all in King County because it will reduce congestion," she said.

But Dunn warned that when the fee expires in two years, "we'll be right back here again" and the fee might become permanent.

That was unlikely, Councilmember Joe McDermott said. Extending the fee would require votes by the Legislature and County Council, McDermott said.

Bob Young: 206-464-2174 or byoung@seattletimes.com