Whoops goes the monorail

The forgotten man works and votes — generally he prays — but his chief business in life is to pay.

— William Graham Sumner, 1840-1910

The late Yale professor had a point about the backbone of our society — the citizen whose unnoticed heroism is in the everyday business of work, raising families and paying taxes.

These forgotten taxpayers should weigh heavily on the minds of Seattle City Council members as they consider whether to let Seattle Monorail Project construction proceed. Its escalating costs and bizarre financing scheme justify a serious reconsideration of the project.

Yet, some council members seem downright skittish about the possibility of saying no to the monorail. Even skeptic Councilman Richard McIver is reluctant to interfere: "It's not my place to overturn the votes. I'm not going to lay my body across the track."

State Treasurer Mike Murphy thinks he should — and for good reason. He's concerned about the monorail project's plan to issue bonds over 40 years, resulting in a cost to taxpayers of five times the monorail's construction cost. Somehow, other state and municipal agencies get by with bonds issued over 25-30 years and enjoy lower interest rates.

To underscore how dimly Murphy views the plan, he invokes the name of that granddaddy of public-works-projects-gone-wrong, the Washington Public Power Supply System (WPPSS) — or more famously, "Whoops!"

In the 1970s, the coalition of public utilities launched a bold effort to build five nuclear power plants in the Northwest. Only one was completed. Ballooning construction costs, hugely overestimated power-need projections and other factors contributed to WPPSS' historic default on $2.25 billion in bonds.

A state treasurer's office employee then, Murphy watched several agencies' bond ratings fall. Even the state's went down two clicks — though the only connection was "Washington" in the title.

Bond raters are notoriously fickle creatures. Murphy fears, if the monorail project goes south, other agencies in Seattle and beyond could be hurt. Just by association, the city and the Seattle School District might have to pay a higher interest on bonds. The reason is the district, the city and the monorail authority would have the same taxpayers footing all of the higher bills.

There are differences between WPPSS and the monorail project, of course. SMP is a transit project and has not yet issued bonds.

But there are important similarities — ballooning costs and bad predictions.

Murphy's comparison to WPPSS got me thinking about a previous Seattle City Council and the leadership it showed in making a tough, unpopular decision in 1976.

That's when Seattle became the only one of more than 160 utilities that refused to buy a portion of the power output from Nuclear Projects 4 and 5, still on the drawing board. Three years later, some council members wanted the city out of the WPPSS partnership altogether. Randy Revelle, chair of the city's energy committee at the time, remembers a hearing at Seattle Center attended by more than 1,000 people and lasting until 4 o'clock in the morning.

The city was stuck and, when WPPSS defaulted on the bonds in 1982, the city still was on the hook for tens of millions of dollars — but far less than if it had bought into Plants 4 and 5.

I called Revelle to ask if the comparison between WPPSS and monorail is farfetched?

No, he insists. Revelle, who later served as King County executive, worries about this unusual financing plan. "The change in circumstances fully justifies a serious, thorough review by the council," he says.

Revelle remembers the city's war over WPPSS when the council bucked the mayor and the region. He credits several factors, including a citizens committee report. I found Sumner's quote in the yellowed pages of "Energy 1990," starting the chapter on "Rate Structure and Options."

Today, City Council members have an opportunity to be a watchdog on behalf of the constituents they share with the Seattle Monorail Project. Citizens have a harder time doing so, thanks to the monorail project's insulated governance structure. Only two of the SMP's 10 board members are directly elected; the rest are appointed by the mayor, council and the board itself.

Yes, voters approved the monorail. But they did not vote on the project's emerging and troubling finances — car-tab-tax revenues falling far short of projections and construction costs rising. Nor did they vote on the financing scheme. Forty-year bonds? $11.4 billion to pay off a $2.1 billion capital project?

That will keep the forgotten man and woman, their children and even their grandchildren paying for 14 miles of track that doesn't solve Seattle's major congestion problems. City Council members owe them better.

Kate Riley's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is kriley@seattletimes.com