Senators call for investigation into Sound Transit
May 11, 2017, 6:28 PM | Updated: May 12, 2017, 8:35 am
Car tabs. (KIRO 7)
(KIRO 7)
On the heels of legislation targeting Sound Transit, two Washington state senators are calling for a special investigation into the agency.
Republican Senators Steve O’Ban and Dino Rossi have written a letter to the Senate Transportation Committee and the Senate Law and Justice Committee requesting that they open an investigation into Sound Transit. O’Ban and Rossi express concern that the transit agency could have engaged in a “systematic effort to confuse and misrepresent the impact and cost of the ST3 authorization to legislators and the public.”
RELATED: O’Ban calls out Sound Transit for running a “shell game”
In other words, the two senators want to find out if the agency’s officials purposefully misled lawmakers and voters about how the recently-passed Sound Transit 3 package would work. It was discovered after ST3 passed that the agency opted to use an outdated method to calculate car tab fees. This method uses MSRP rates — much higher than normal depreciation — and in turn caused dramatically higher fees.
In their letter to the senate committees, the senators propose that Sound Transit may have violated the state Constitution and state regulations when it drafted the ST3 package. They also argue that concern about Sound Transit’s methods are bi-partisan, citing Democratic comments on the issue in the media.
“Even House Democrats don’t buy Sound Transit’s shell game,” Rossi said. “There are legitimate questions about the bait and switch pulled on both the legislators and the public. We deserve to know the truth.”
It’s not the first time that O’Ban and Rossi have teamed up to take on the agency over ST3. They previously have asked Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson to weigh in on the constitutionality of ST3. O’Ban has sponsored a bill that would change the leadership structure of Sound Transit. Rossie also previously sponsored a bill that aimed to allow regions to opt out of ST3 if they did not approve it.
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