Commentary: Voter should directly elect Sound Transit’s board

By Mariya Frost

Like any other legislative body, the Sound Transit Board meets regularly, is subject to transparency and open meetings laws, has taxing authority, and makes policy and budget decisions for the agency. Unlike a legislative body, however, the board is appointed and not directly accountable to the public.

With the recent passage of Sound Transit 3, which is funded by some of the largest transit taxes in the nation, it is now that much more important for the board to be directly accountable to the public for the commitments they have made over the next 25 years. The purpose of that accountability isn’t just to empower citizens to remove members who have failed to represent their mobility needs. Accountability also serves as a deterrent against those failures before they happen, as directly elected board members have a strong incentive to honor the taxpayers who elected them.

Currently, board members are only directly elected to their local offices, and are appointed to the board afterward. As a result, citizens do not know whether their local representative will sit on the Sound Transit board when the representative is first elected, a structural problem identified by the State Auditor’s Office in 2012. Because of this appointment structure, it is unlikely that a local official would be voted out of office based on his or her decisions on a transit issue.

For example, Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers is the new Sound Transit board chairman, yet he lives outside of the taxing district. It is unlikely that he will be unelected by his county constituents for a decision he makes within the Sound Transit taxing district, which takes up a small southwest corner of the county. Voters within the taxing district should be able to hold him directly accountable for decisions he makes on the Sound Transit board. This is a flaw in state law that can be fixed with a directly elected board, which is exactly what Senate Bill 5001 would do.

Senate Bill 5001 would create 19 districts with nearly equal populations. A five-member districting commission from each of the five subareas, appointed by the governor, would define the boundaries of the 19 districts. The districting commission would then be reappointed every decade as new census data becomes available. Members would not be permitted to hold any other public office, to reduce the conflicts of interest we have seen over the years within the existing Sound Transit board.

This shift to a directly elected model would have the added value of allowing ordinary citizens to serve on the Sound Transit board. Each of the Sound Transit board members, at one point or another, were working citizens as well who chose to run for their local seats as county executives, mayors and city council members. Other citizens should have the same opportunity to run for the Sound Transit board, an entirely separate governing body.

Democracy can be messy, of course. Campaigns are expensive, elections are competitive, and not every one of the 19 districts will necessarily support Sound Transit’s inherent preference for light rail over other, more flexible and affordable transit modes.

A directly elected model might, in fact, create more friction on the board, which would no longer be an echo chamber that disenfranchises thousands of voters in the three-county taxing district.

The board might also no longer vote unanimously in support of projects or the agency’s multi-billion-dollar annual budget, as they have for the last 15 years.

The board might even select projects that reflect the diverse needs of its taxing district, rather than a one-size-fits all solution. If their districts don’t feel they have been represented well or their money has been misspent or mismanaged, citizens would have the power to remove and replace the board member with someone who can do better.

Accountability in a democratic system can be uncomfortable, especially for an agency as big as Sound Transit. Even so, that is exactly how it should be.

Mariya Frost is the director of the Coles Center for Transportation at Washington Policy Center, an independent, non-profit think tank based in Seattle, with offices around the state. Go to www.washingtonpolicy.org.