The Perils of Unaccountable Transit Boards
We pay. Insiders decide. Nobody answers.
Washington has a proud tradition of direct democracy. For over a century, voters have retained powers of initiative, referendum, and recall, some of the Progressive movement’s biggest and longest-lasting achievements in the state. More than a century later, Washington governs its consequential transportation agencies by appointment, behind closed doors, with no direct electoral check, without the same democratic principles used by the trailblazers of yesteryear.
The rot runs deep in Sound Transit, the state’s only Regional Transit Authority (RTA), and in many of the largest Public Transportation Benefit Areas (PTBAs).
In their CEO appointment processes, both Sound Transit and the Spokane Transit Authority (STA) conducted searches largely behind closed doors and presented the community with a single finalist. These agencies effectively made the hiring decision before any public input could be meaningful, let alone via a competitive and publicly visible process.
The Dow Constantine appointment at Sound Transit is the most striking. He was a 16-year board member who appointed 9 of his 18 evaluators, and is now CEO at a $450,000 annual salary.
Not to be outdone, CEO Thomas Drozt at Ben Franklin Transit (BFT) of the Tri-Cities, hired unanimously by BFT’s board, became the subject of bonkers financial misconduct allegations. There was a contract worth more than $125,000 awarded to an acquaintance with a prior felony sexual assault conviction. And a payment to an LLC registered to Drozt’s stepson for services that staff said never occurred before the board finally terminated Drozt without severance.
Last year at Clark County’s C-TRAN, Board Member Michelle Belkot intended to vote to guarantee protections for the agency against any operations and maintenance costs for light rail on the Interstate Bridge Replacement project. Instead, Belkot was removed from the C-TRAN board by her colleagues and replaced, presumably to secure an additional vote in favor of bridge planning language without those same guarantees.
Right now, Snohomish County’s Community Transit is attempting to annex Everett Transit via a board agreement, doubling Everett’s local transit sales tax from 0.6% to 1.2%. Implementing a 0.6-point increase in a regressive sales tax should be subject to more direct accountability, not uncritically approved by board members due to a staff recommendation at their cumbersome side job.
With all this nonsense of late, it’s important to note that making transportation boards elected isn’t a new idea.
Bills to that end have previously been introduced in the legislature, the most successful push being 2017 legislation passing the State Senate which would’ve required Sound Transit board seats be directly elected. This history is proof positive that board accountability is the exact type of good governance problem that’s directly solvable.
It’s also the type of problem Washington voters seem uninterested in solving in an era where all their politics seem to be national.
In defense of these voters, this wreck can’t be fixed with a single bill. Separate measures would be needed to enable board elections at the RTA (Sound Transit) and PTBAs (all other transit agencies except King County Metro), with the PTBA measure only capturing benefit areas serving populations exceeding 250,000 or with annual budgets exceeding $50 million.
This way, there are clear expectations of direct democracy at most of our state’s largest transit agencies (I didn’t forget about you, Pierce Transit).
It’s easy to understand why the scale of problems at Sound Transit alone can take up the entire line of sight for a critical eye toward public transportation, board elections or not. But direct elections are the best way for us to have a chance at turning existing failures into future accomplishments.
Washington’s real Progressives understood that democratic accountability is the mechanism by which public institutions stay connected to public needs. Despite signs of voter fatigue with down ballot races, these transit agencies shouldn’t be governed by people nobody directly voted to put there. The buses and trams keeping some of Washington’s biggest cities moving deserve more than a board assembled in a county executive’s conference room. They deserve a vote on who runs them.
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