Seattle City Council candidate Robert Rosencrantz says his opponent, Mike O'Brien, wants to put tolls on every road in the whole city and "double" electricity rates.

It's the latest dispute in the city's most competitive City Council race. O'Brien, a Sierra Club leader, and Rosencrantz, an apartment-building owner, emerged from a crowded primary field of eight candidates.

A couple of weeks ago, O'Brien's campaign went after Rosencrantz for his views on abortion.

Now, Rosencrantz says O'Brien is making extreme proposals that don't take into account the financial difficulties city residents face.

In July, O'Brien said at a Friends of Seattle endorsement interview that he supports tolling "everywhere."

(You can watch a video of just that answer on a clip the Rosencrantz campaign made. For more context, Friends of Seattle has posted the whole interview. The tolling portion is near the end of the first segment.)

O'Brien told me this morning that saying "everywhere" was "a flippant comment" meant to convey that he thinks tolls should be considered as a way to pay for transportation projects.

But O'Brien hasn't backed off his support for tolls, which he says are more fair because they are paid by road users. In exchange for tolls, however, O'Brien supports reducing other taxes that currently pay for transportation projects, like property taxes, sales taxes, and car-tab fees.

As for electricity rates, O'Brien supports giving city ratepayers a credit at the beginning of the month and raising rates for electricity use. That would mean people who conserved electricity could end up getting money back. People who used a lot of electricity would pay more, and people who use about the same, he said, would pay about the same amount.

"People all over Seattle are struggling to balance their checkbooks," Rosencrantz said today. "Raising rates to decrease demand doesn't make sense from a financial position. it also doesn't make sense, given that Seattle City Light has the carbon footprint of a ballerina's slipper."