King County Charter Amendments:
#1 - Elected Elections Director - This is in response to the King County elections scandal of 2004 when votes for Gregoire kept appearing until she had enough to declare victory. In the long run, it solves nothing. In a Democrat or Republican controlled county, the election of a partisan as elections director is as much or more likely than an executive appointed council approved director. VOTE NO.
#2 - Prohibiting Discrimination - Who can be against banning discrimination by King County against homosexuals or the disabled? Ask the Boy Scouts who would not be allowed to rent or use county facilities because they don't let gay men be scout leaders. Some way to allow exceptions to the rule is needed. VOTE NO.
#3 - Regional Committees - VOTE YES.
#4 - Additional Qualifications for Elected Officials. - Now get this, before someone could run for sheriff, assessor or elections director (see #1), they'd have to meet qualifications set by the County Council. Surely they jest. What an opportunity for political mischief. VOTE NO.
#5 - Establishing Forecast Council and Office of Economic and Financial Analysis - A country economist, if truly independent, would be useful for planning and budgeting. Hopefully, the office could support other local governments. VOTE YES.
#6 - Budget Deadlines - VOTE YES.
#7 - Charter Amendment by Citizen Initiative - This would make it more difficult for voters to change the county charter by initiative. Power to the People. VOTE NO.
#8 Non Partisan Elections - This would make the County Council, County Executive and Assessor non-partisan offices. The Seattle mayor and council are non-partisan, right? Sure they are. Deleting political parties does not guarantee good government but it does remove one more bit of information voters can use to judge candidates. Information that may indicate the most likely candidate view point on issues like land use, business climate, government programs, taxes and spending. VOTE NO.
Sound Transit Proposition 1 to expand mass transit - This puts us close to a 10% sales tax and spends billions (they say $17.9B) primarily to push light rail across I-90 to the East side, north to Northgate and south from Sea-Tac to Redondo/Star Lake. The list of reasons to vote no is too long to list but let's see how well the current light rail works before we plunge into another light rail gamble. VOTE NO.
City of Seattle
Proposition 1 - Pike Place Market and
Proposition 2 - Six Year Property Tax for Parks
This is not the climate for raising property taxes. Try taking a hard look at the city budget to see how much is allocated to basic services such as fire, police, streets, parks and libraries before yielding to the all too common practice of using special levies for the popular programs while spending freely on items extraneous to the core mission of the city. VOTE NO.
State of Washington
Initiative Measure 985 proposes several measures designed to increase traffic flow such as use of HOV lanes in non rush hour times, synchronization of traffic lights and dedication of certain traffic related income to traffic flow purposes. There is just too much handcuffing detail in this measure. It is planning by initiative, which rarely works well. VOTE NO.
Initiative Measure 1000 is death with dignity or assisted suicide similar to the Oregon law. Today one can get hospice care, decline artificial means or heroic efforts to keep one alive, receive pain-killing drugs and refuse treatment. Adding suicide is too far down the slippery slope. VOTE NO.
Initiate Measure 1029 Certification of long-term care workers. Sounds good but raises serious concerns for family member care givers. The Legislature should work on this one. VOTE NO.
Posted by warrenpeterson at October 23, 2008 06:32 PM | Email ThisI'll take strong issue with your No on the Elected Elections Director. It's less about partisanship than accountability and independence. The current appointed elections director is accountable solely to the county executive and subordinate to the executive's other priorities. An independent elected director is directly accountable to the voters. It's not a panacea, but an improvement.
Posted by: Stefan Sharkansky on October 23, 2008 07:59 PMWhy is an exception needed? And since the whole point is to discourage discrimination by groups like the Boy Scouts, why should we ask such discriminatory groups how they feel about the rule?
Posted by: Bruce on October 23, 2008 08:22 PMMany religious groups ban gay folks as leaders. The Girl Scouts ban boys as members (but interestingly the Boy Scouts accept girls in some of their programs). Sports teams "ban" disabled folks.
Posted by: BA on October 23, 2008 08:55 PMWith regards to the state initiatives, I do agree with your recommendations.
I think voters need to read the Voters Guide on the initiatives and not just go by the title or who sponsored them. While I-985 sounds good on the surface, when you read the details, you go wait a minute, this thing goes into too much minutia and handcuffing. I liked the term you used, it is planning by initiative. If the initiative had just focused on the HOV lanes, then I think it would have been fine and probably succeeded. It is the "weeds" details regarding synchronization of stop lights that goes too far. I don't disagree in a city like Seattle that stop lights need to be synchronized, but that is a city issue to address, not a state directed mandate. If Eyman want the cities to synchronize their light then take it to those city councils.
Posted by: tc on October 24, 2008 07:39 AMDo you trust Ron Sims?
My answer is unequivocally no, so I'm voting YES.
I'm voting yes on I-985 too. The bureaucrats aren't interested in relieving traffic congestion, and this is at least one way to force them to address it. If "handcuffing" politicians is wrong, I don't want to be right.
Posted by: Palouse on October 24, 2008 08:33 AMI-1000 makes humane a very common form of ending the suffering amongst terminally ill patients. My great aunt had lupus which caused her a lot of pain. She was also made very sick by all of the pain management treatments she was receiving right near the end of her life. Her solution was to get up a dawn, go outside and watch the sunrise on a beach and then put a pistol in her mouth and pull the trigger.
This is a liberty issue and a practical one. People will kill themselves if they want to. I-1000 finally would give them an option to do it humanely and, as the initiative says, with dignity.
Posted by: blindman on October 24, 2008 09:27 AM