State Supreme Court removes legal hurdle from light-rail project

The state Supreme Court today lifted one of the last legal clouds hanging over Sound Transit's Seattle light-rail line, ruling it was legal for the agency to scale back the project in response to cost overruns.

Sane Transit, an opposition coalition, filed a lawsuit two years ago to block the line, arguing it was illegal because it wasn't the same project that voters approved in 1996. Foes wanted the project halted until another vote could be held.

But, by a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that voters had given Sound Transit discretion to scale back the project in the event of unforeseen circumstances.

The "Sound Move" regional transit plan that King, Snohomish and Pierce county voters approved in 1996 called for a 21-mile light-rail line from Seattle's University District to SeaTac by 2006. By late 2000, however, the project was $1 billion over budget and three years behind schedule.

So, in November 2001, the Sound Transit board downsized the project to a 14-mile line from downtown Seattle to Tukwila, to be finished in 2009.

Construction finally began last fall.

Sane Transit argued an eight-page Sound Transit brochure mailed to voters before the 1996 election promised the full 21-mile line would be built within 10 years, and made no mention of possible delays or downsizing. But Chief Justice Gerry Alexander, writing for the court majority, said voters actually had approved a lengthier Sound Transit board resolution that allowed for changes if money ran short.

"An inquiry into the voter's subjective understanding of what he or she thought he or she was enacting is a task we will not undertake," Alexander wrote.

Justices Richard Sanders, Charles Johnson and Tom Chambers dissented.

"It is fundamental that governments have no power to divert tax dollars for a purpose other than that authorized" Sanders wrote. "Yet the majority now permits the taxing authority, Sound Transit, to use a 30 percent longer time than promised to construct a light-rail line one-third shorter than promised."

Chambers called the majority ruling a blow to the people's power to legislate directly. It gives proponents of a measure "almost unfettered discretion to (do) whatever they want regardless of what the resolution submitted to the people promises to the people," he wrote.

Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com