In the August issue of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 587 newsletter, there is a lot of attention given to WPC and our recent reports on King County’s ability to deliver the bus service promised to voters after the last two sales tax increases.

Once you get past the partisan, inflammatory and personal attacks, union leaders aggressively defend the higher pay for bus drivers, which has risen about 60 percent since the tax increases. This is twice the rate of inflation over the same time period.

A driver's union leader says this:

“Bus Drivers [sic] wages have tracked King County inflation for twenty years, but little more. The working conditions inflicted on Drivers [sic] is so distasteful that METRO could not hire an adequate number of Driver [sic] in a good economy offering the wages and benefits that they did.”

I’m not sure these union leaders realize it, but in their haste to defend the higher wages, ! they precisely prove my point. The last two sales tax increases that Metro officials promised would deliver 1.28 million hours of new bus service have instead been used to increase wages for union bus drivers.

This is not a liberal or conservative issue. Nor is this a rant against how much money a bus driver makes. Metro drivers work hard and should be paid for it. This is simply about the ability of County officials to deliver the bus service they promised to voters after the last two sales tax increases.