Dori: ‘No on 976’ TV ads sleazier than anything Eyman has done

What a big surprise — the Seattle City Council might take a position against I-976 on Monday. Wow, we didn’t see that coming.

Of course they’re going to say no to the initiative. Anything that restricts the flow of cash to government is an anathema to them.

The “No on I-976” TV commercials are infuriating in how bogus they are. They all call it “Tim Eyman’s 976,” because they say Tim Eyman is some kind of a shyster. And he might be. But I guarantee you that this “no” campaign contains every bit as much of shysters.

One of the commercials features images of the Skagit River Bridge after its collapse, suggesting that it collapsed because of poor road maintenance. The ad warns that if the initiative passes, it will take critical funding away from roads and bridges, and more incidents like the Skagit River Bridge collapse will be in our future.

David Boze: ‘No on I-976’ campaign forgets how popular $30 tabs are

That is such a lie. That bridge collapsed because a huge truck hit one of the main support beams and took the whole thing down.

Another ad featured a Washington State Patrol trooper, Courtney Stewart, in uniform.

That is illegal. You cannot represent the Washington State Patrol in uniform. You can do so in your off time without wearing your law enforcement hat, but taking political action in uniform and being identified as a trooper means that you effectively are representing the Washington State Patrol. Washington State Patrol Regulation 8.00.230 makes this clear:

Employees, while off duty and not representing the department, shall have the same political privileges as private citizens except as limited in these rules or by state or federal law.

Another ad from the “no” campaign states that 200,000 hours of King County Metro bus service will be cut if I-976 is passed. Hang on, didn’t we just vote to spend $54 billion for Sound Transit 3? And didn’t we also pass a Metro Transit levy? They already have these specific voter approved excise taxes on you and me. Yet somehow the roof will fall in if you and I start paying $30 on car tabs?

They talk about Eyman being sleazy, but how sleazy are their tactics? You lie about why a bridge collapsed. You have a Washington State Patrol trooper break the rules to appear in your ad. I’m serious, these guys make Eyman look like Mother Teresa.

It’s like I talked about last week — you have the two most powerful forces in our society, government and media, colluding because government wants billions of our dollars. It wants Sound Transit to be able to continue to overvalue our vehicles so that they can overtax us and pocket our money.

Jenny Durkan called I-976 a “catastrophic effect” on transportation. What a pack of lies that is. Like you’ve done such a bang-up job with regional mobility, Jenny, with all of your road diets and your big push to toll downtown. We are paying you more in taxes than ever before, and our traffic is worse than ever.

I have a better idea for a commercial. “A ‘yes’ vote for 976 will allow you to keep $4 billion more of your hard-earned dollars. We’ll take the record revenues that we’re already sucking in and we’ll prioritize them better to make sure that things stay safe out there.”

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