Recluse reflections

Recluse reflections: SMP makes ballot measure into campaign screed
Notes on spaces seen through windows

"But now he knows these hills, that is to say he knows them better, and if ever again he sees them from afar it will be I think with other eyes, and not only that but the within, all that inner space one never sees, the brain and heart and other caverns where thought and feeling dance their sabbath, all this too quite differently disposed."
-- Samuel Beckett

author

Robin Evans
Seattle

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Monday, September 26, 2005

SMP makes ballot measure into campaign screed

I'm not a lawyer, so I'm always a bit surprised when I try to read legalese in some documents, but I'm nonetheless astounded to read the text of SMP's ballot measure [a .pdf document].

As is true of most of these things, one must search to find the meat of it all.

SMP is asking to be released from restrictions placed upon their authority by earlier measures so that they can, if they choose, build a shorter monorail line from Interbay to West Seattle or some other kind of modified line.

That's simple enough, but the measure begins with a massive collection of "Whereas" clauses that read like a poorly written campaign piece. I guess that their legal staff must know what it's doing here, but I'll admit that I'm more confused than informed by this kind of partisan history. I understand that it is common practice to include these kinds of tendentious clauses, but this particular collection seems excessive.

I'm baffled. Why do we need to know in the ballot language, as one of the unnumbered "Whereas" clauses informs us, that "on September 7, 2005, at an open public meeting, the Board's Independent Financial Policy Analyst, Kevin Phelps, presented his recommendations to the Board for an improved borrowing strategy that would lead to an acceptable, defensible finance plan..."?

That strikes me as the kind of debatable assertion that could and should be made in the official statement in support of the measure, but inappropriate (to my non-lawyer eyes) in the actual ballot language. After all, many who understand these things better than I do have concluded that Phelps presented a plan that is neither "acceptable" nor "defensible".

But, again, I dunno. These sorts of things have precedent and I suppose that their staff of lawyers figured this is the best way to get to the essential question:

Do you want to give this group more power so that they can build a shorter line?

Technorati tags: Seattle monorail Seattle Monorail Project Seattle Boondoggle

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