Dori: Sound Transit over-budget again — what a surprise

Remember when Sound Transit got to Husky Stadium? And remember when they lied and told everyone in the media they were on-time and on-budget? Even though they were 11 years behind-schedule and billions over budget. Remember their explanation? They said, “Oh, that’s what we promised everyone back in 1996. But we did a reset a few years ago.” They backtracked and said they were on-time and on-budget for the reset.

I was so frustrated at the rest of the media in town that just repeated the Sound Transit lie. That’s all it was — just a blatant, bald-faced lie by Sound Transit. But that is what is to be expected with this agency.

RELATED: Dori says Sound Transit plays Seattle voters for chumps

Now, our transportation specialist at KIRO Radio, Chris Sullivan, is reporting that the budget for Sound Transit’s Northgate-to-Lynnwood link has gone up by more than $800 million — $800 million. They voted to approve a baseline budget of $2.4 billion initially; now it is up to $3.2 billion.

They said, “Oh, it’s the hot real estate market. We couldn’t have anticipated how hot it was around here.” Really? That’s how you’re explaining ripping off the public for close to another billion dollars? This has been the most criminally inept and criminally run agency in the history of the United States.

Their strategy has been the same since the first day back in 1996 — let’s break ground and then we can’t turn back. We can just add a billion here and a billion there. They’re already hundreds of millions over budget on the trains to the Eastside and they haven’t laid an inch of track.

Here’s the question — are they going to try to pull the Husky Stadium con on us again? Are they going to say, “Oh yeah, we were lying to everyone when we said it would be $2.4 billion; we changed it in 2018, and it’s actually $3.2 billion now.” And now if they happen to build it for that $3.2 billion — which is unlikely — are they going to try to tell us once again that they are on-time and on-budget? I bet they will, because that’s the kind of deceptive weasels they are. That’s the kind of criminal corruption that Sound Transit is all about.

Think about this. The head tax — all this hand-wringing over $50 million a year. Just the over budget amount for this project is the equivalent of 50 years of the head tax. Fifty years. So that Sound Transit can continue to rip off all the people in this region, including the people down in Pierce County who voted “no” on ST3.

It’s an unbelievable, criminally-corrupt region around here. And they’re incompetent. Can you imagine hiring someone to do an addition on your home for $200,000, and while the house is torn up, they come to you and tell you it will be $400,000? Would you go for that as a consumer? And if the answer is no, why would you go for that as a voter?

At what point are you going to say, “This is enough?” They just keep coming back, and the people keep saying yes.

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