We should spend these 100's of millions on education, with a focus on the early childhood issues that plaque our unwed and single momms.

Mel Eaton
Snohomish

Nascar is the way to go. The folks running Kitsap have have made no attempt to look into this issue. Its about time the roads in this area get a face lift.

Lewis County to support the area. Private enterprise must start supporting themselves without the tax payers supporting these special interests. Thank you...

NASCAR!!!! we should for sure spend our money on the new nascar track. it will bring in millions on race weekends and can be used for alot of other things. i am a part of the back the track commitee and i say yes all the way!

This city has the potential to go from being a good city to a great city. I applaud the fact that Mayor Greg Nickels has the vision and excitement to make this city great. A tunnel is definitely part of the answer in adding aesthetics to a pathetic waterfront, not an elevated concrete slab or busy surface street. I wish all the government officials in Olympia had that same degree of passion. Pony up people it's time to start making this one of the best cities in the country.

Of the choices listed, only transportation is a legitimate public purpose for which taxes should be spent. The rest are simply business operations that should stand on their own. Do not subsidize any of them.

When every man, women, and child is covered by health care and all our children's educational needs are met, then we can talk about spending taxes on sporting concerns.

I would like to see the Nascar Track get funding. It would bring a lot of money and jobs to the citizens of Washington State. I would also like to see the Equestrian Center get funded. It would be a much needed boost for Lewis County. Many young people are involved with horses and the center would provide a good outlet for our young citizens.

As far as the Sonics, I vote they get nothing. We have already given them enough in the past.

NASCAR... most likely to provide noticeable economic benefit to the state and to Kitsap Co.

There are concerns regarding infastructure...maybe those should be addressed whether there's a race track or not.

Why not an Alaska Way Trench as vs. a tunnel?

Kent is a growing city. It's time it had some special amenities. Having family entertainment close to home allows us to conserve gas and time. This center would serve a large portion of the voters. Bring on the events center.

NO ON NASCAR!!!! WE DO NOT NEED MORE TRAFFIC AND MORE POLLUTION. THE MONEY CAN BE BETTER SPENT OTHER WAYS. I COULD GO ON AND ON BUT THE POINT IS THE WORST CHOICE IS NASCAR....

NASCAR is my vote. People are unaware of how many people are forced to travel to other states to attend a NASCAR event. This revenue could be going to our own state. Kasey Kahne and Greg Biffle draw a lot of attention to Washington and there are many others that live in Washington that dream of following in their footsteps. There are also others in NASCAR that are from the west coast, such as Jeff Gordon and Kurt Bush. The interest in NASCAR is definetly here in Washington. The event I attended in Las Vegas drew 50,000 people, from all over including our state. People will travel from coast to coast to attend a NASCAR race. It would generate some much needed new money to our state. We need to support a NASCAR track!

I would also like to see the Equestrian Center get funded. It would be a boost for Lewis County. Many young people are involved with horses and the center would provide a great outlet for our young citizens.

As far as the Sonics, I vote they get nothing. We have already given them enough in the past.

I think that there are some things worth spending money on and others that are not. Downtown Seattle gets most of the funding in King County so I am not for rebuilding Key Arena. Why not spread out the wealth. The south sound rarely gets the money for community projects. I say an event center in Kent is the way to go. Also, if everyone is so concerned about traffic, maybe if everyone wasn't traveling to the same few urban centers all the time traffic wouldn't be so bad.

None of the above. We need smart cost effective solutions to public problems. We don't need to subsidize the mayor's ego trip through a tunnel, and we don't need to subsidize spoiled rich team owners.

Pro sports’ business model is broken because owners have been able to dupe politicians into providing welfare for the rich. We need to get pro sports off the dole.

To keep this area vibrant, we need to greatly improve public education and the transportation system but not by wasting money on a boondoggles.

I would spend the money on the Equestrian Center and on the Tunnel.

As to the Equestrian Center, if the State does not fund it, then it cannot happen. If it does get built it will help an area that needs help.

As to the Tunnel, this is an important North-South route for commerce that benefits the entire region. Seattle is going to have to come up with a very large amount of the cost (hopefully primarily in the form of special assessments to the properties that are going to see their values soar as a result), which is resaonable. For the rest, the entire State reaps economic benefits.

I would not give any money to the Sonics. The idea of subsidizing a group of fantastically wealthy people who own the teams, who have so miserably failed to manage their employee costs, seems ridiculous. If Renton, which will be the only jurisdiction that would benefit, wants to bear the full burden of the cost, then I would support that - just so long as it is their money that is spent. However, that should be put to a vote of the citizens of Renton. Seattle overwhelming voted no, but the folks in Renton may feel differently.

For the same reasons, I would not vote public money for the Nascar track - unless the people of the immediate vicinty that would be benefitted voted to bear the full burden of the public funds.

As a general comment on supporting sport franchises with public funds, when our roads have been fixed, when our schools have been funded to a level at least in the top ten in the nation, when citizens of our State have access to universal health insurance, when Puget Sound has been returned to health, then we can talk about funding rich folks' games from broad based public funds.

I believe a nascar track would bring more money and would also inprove the roads in the area that really need improving. Also the tax money will be coming from alot of outstate pockets. We have a larger fan base then you know about. thank you

NASCAR ?? Check the Louden, NH track area. There isn't any influx of jobs, no infrastructure improvements. The NASCAR bill calls for complete tax exemption for the Speedway. How is that a good deal for Kitsap county? It isn't . People who support this deal are supporting corporate welfare. Heck, people that support this would support anything. Wonder why no Kitsap legislators are on board? It's a bad deal for US!

This is not just a Western Washington issue this is a WASHINGTON STATE ISSUE! Nascar and all professional sporting industries do not need WELFARE FROM THE PEOPLE OF WASHINGTON STATE! They should be a self supporting company, if there are in financial trouble they should consider cutting back on the millions they pay there player or increase the cost of the tickets. They should not expect citizens of Washington State to hand them walfare when numerous citizens of this state are in need of Medical and are Schools are in need of repair and upgrading. Areas in this state are laying of police, fire fighters and libraries are being shut down. Also National Parks are in disrepair and global warming is an issue that is effecting all of us and needs to be addressed to safe are earth. With every thing that is going on in this state and around the world we are depating if we should build a Nascar track near are sound that is dying and in an area that is choked by traffic. To me this would be Ethicly and morally wrong.

NASCAR would be the logical economic choice. The NBA is suffering from a major image issue which has resulted in declining revenues in most markets. NASCAR, however, is experiencing phenominal growth in every market in the nation. The dollars spent per person, per event, far excedes that of the other alternatives. Tha tax dollars generated from these events will support many of our state infrastructures.

NO TO TUNNEL, TOO EXPENSIVE (SAVE $), 4 LANE TUNNEL WILL NOT HANDLE CURRENT OR FUTURE TRAFFIC VOLUME.

YES TO NEW ELEVATED HIGHWAY.

The only consistent north/south major route (and during the AM/PM commutes) in the Seattle Metro area is Hwy 99 & the viaduct. I-5, I-405 and all others are a mess. $600M additional for a 1/2-mile (or whatever the distance) park/mall and a better view for only downtown residents is just hard to understand.

The tunnel will take longer to construct, increasing the time of having to endure a most likely increased AM/PM commute nightmare during the construction of the new elevated hwy or tunnel. Also, the same construction problems that Boston Mass. experienced with their tunnel project (Big Dig) may be a concern or should be.

BUILD NEW INDOOR ARENA, KEEP SONICS/STORM
BUILD NASCAR TRACK
BUILD EQUESTRIAN CENTER

Let's do some math, government contributions:
ARENA $400M
NASCAR $188M
EQUESTRIAN $53M
TOTAL = $641M (close to $600M !!)

I'm sure with some smart, positive, business like (NON-POLITICAL, bipartisan) negotiation by our public officials (and input from possibly other private interests, like Microsoft, Boeing) with the Sonics/Storm owners and Nascar & Equestrian interests can shrink that $41M and maybe more.

Of course, you don't do all at once:

1. A. Decide on and start construction of a new elevated highway
1. B. Commit to a new arena

2. Start construction of the new arena

3. or 4. Nascar track
3. or 4. Equestrian Center
(Whichever order the public wishes)

$600M savings of not building a tunnel and help fund a new contemporary indoor arena to house the Sonics/Storm, a possible NHL franchise and the flexibility to handle most or any other indoor event (concerts, etc.)...And then also possibly a Nascar track and Equestrian Center down the road.

And, let's be realistic, a new indoor arena will have a far greater economic impact in the long run. Auto racing tracks & equestrian centers are far behind.

And, the argument of funding "millionaires" is very simplistic. Government subsidizing of multiple business types (and their respective millionaires)...other than sports...has been, is and will continue to be part of the public/private economic partnership. States, counties, municipalities and other public/government entities regularly build infrastructure and give tax incentives to attract and keep business.

WELL, IF ANY OR ALL OF THE ABOVE YOU FEEL IS NOT REALISTIC OR FEASIBLE OR RELEVANT...THEN:

Take the $600M from a tunnel project and fix the Seattle Metro transportation mess (North, South, East & West) and stop closing schools. Provide healthcare for all. Solve homelessness and the widening economic gap between "millionaires/billionaires" and middle & low-income individuals/families.

But, we'll lose professional sports, entertainment, community identities and their respective events (such as, at least 41 Sonic games at the arena…and 41 on TV/radio) to look forward to as we sit in the AM/PM traffic quagmires from November to at least mid-April, during the worst weather period of the year…here. And, for good measure, we lose the Storm during the summer. And, we lose the Ray Allen’s, Lauren Jackson’s, and et.al. You have to admit, you'll lose some role models for kids.

And, then maybe we’ll have a chance to be a major sports & entertainment city/area again 10-15 years down the road.

why would anyone believe the mayor and the govenor's pleas for a viaduct or a tunnel ,
i think that for right now, any viadut idea is a dead issue

as for the sonics, if seattle voters want to see the key arena remodeled as soon as bennett was going to build his so called "pepsi arena" lookalike in either bellvue or renton
then both king county voters, and seattle voters better hope that the viaduct fiasco fails
because sonics fans aren't pleased
and sonics fans deserve the key arena remodeled
just as much as bellevue or renton sonics fans begging for a new arena in their town

nascar, i'm all for it

just as long as sonics fans get their fair share
with both the renewal/remodel of the key arena
and clay bennett's renoth or bellevue stadium ideas
who knows what the legistlators may have up their sleeves for the nascar track plans

Send the Sonics packing, dig a tunnel, race some cars, and bring on the rodeo!

The NBA will come crawling back to one of the nicest cities and parts of the country.

How can we justify corporate welfare when we don't know how to pay for the infrastructure that will keep our economy going? Nascar is a dying enterprise in light of globalwarming and rising fuel costs. The Sonics should be taking their own risks if indeed it will be as profitable as they claim.

Those who advocate for a NASCAR track need a dose of reality. With the population in the N.W. there is no doubt that the grandstands would be full and there would be revenue from out of state visitors. There is however a catch or 2. First of all NASCAR will not race in the rain this would limit the number of possible weekends they would schedule us for. Second NASCAR does not have another track within 800 miles of here. This would set up more scheduling issues as logistics could be a nightmare. Third just because you build it does not mean they will come. In recent years there have been tracks built where only the 'B' leagues show up. Fourth there have been several tracks that have been built that have not generated the kind of economic roses promised. Fifth there have been tracks some in the south that NASCAR has stopped going to, I am sure they would like to get their races back. Sixth which city currently on the schedule would like to give up their race so we could have one. Seventh--- this could go on forever.
A NASCAR track can work here but it should not be placed on the west side and there are at least a thousand other points to be brought up. Until an intelligent plan is put forward just say no.

I have always enjoyed your reporting and felt it was fairly accurate . . . until now. You simply cannot ask "Where should we spend the money?" and lump all three of these proposals together. The NASCAR track is the ONLY one of the three that requires no additional taxes to Washington State taxpayers! Two of the people you interviewed (Lt. Governer & Radio DJ) even told you as much. For some reason, you ignored that portion of their comments. There will absolutely be NO TAX BURDEN to the public if you take the time to actually read the proposal. As for local support, I was in Olympia last week and had the opportunity to run across at least 50 people from the local Kitsap County community who were there specifically to let their own legislators know there is PLENTY of support for this proposal. Perhaps the legislators should listen to their constituents instead of the media!!!

Michael needs to check his facts. For starters, the average annual rainfall in Bremerton, Washington is the same as Daytona Beach, Florida. They've been running a little race there called the Daytona 500 for almost 50 years, and I would venture to say the weather hasn't interfeared with the track's success!

I don't understand why washington legislators are open to building hugh activity centers when a majority of kids are needy in schools. You could vote to help schools, early education, and community programs with alot less money. Look at the dollars and what is needed in your community. You will be surprised at what is being spent and how much you spend to use the facilities. The way I see it, is that people that live in these places need to be better educated on the issues and actually vote.

Seattle voters have a right to know. SEATTLE DO YOU REALLY WANT THIS? I am curious with Mayor Nickels irrational and vehement stand on the tunnel if he is receiving any campaign contributions from Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas. With kickbacks and bribes prevalent to state officials of Boston associated with this project , it seems awfully suspicious concerning the Mayor’s stand. I understand they might be the ones building this tunnel if the Mayor has his way!

Taken for a Ride:
Parsons Brinckerhoff Expose
Taken for a Ride: Parons Brinckerhoff Expose
TAKEN FOR A RIDE
By Tara Servatius
The last time two of the consultants overseeing Mecklenburg County's light rail and mass transit plan worked on a large-scale project together, they were responsible for an 80-foot sinkhole, thousands of lawsuits totaling over $1 billion, and a trail of fraud and corruption so long that even the FBI couldn't untangle it. Now they're advising Charlotte Area Transit Officials on our transit plan and helping to design it.
The two design, construction and engineering firms, Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas, Parsons Transportation Corp., and their smaller business units are directly responsible for projects widely regarded as the biggest transit debacles in the nation's history. Both have stark histories of deceiving the public and government officials about the true costs of transit projects, and then benefiting directly from project cost overruns.
These histories are alarming enough to call into question every figure, fact and cost estimate ever given to the voters and elected officials of Charlotte-Mecklenburg by these companies. And it's enough to make one wonder why the Metropolitan Transit Commission and Charlotte City Council approved consultant contracts with them in the first place.
Members of the MTC we spoke to say they were unaware of the companies' past scandals, but are determined to get answers from Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) CEO Ron Tober. CATS spokespersons said no one there was aware of the companies' past scandals when the contracts were proposed. It's still unclear who did background checks on the companies. (See "What They're Saying" sidebar.)
Boston's Notorious "Big Dig"
In 1998, before Parsons Brinckerhoff, Quade & Douglas prepared Charlotte-Mecklenburg's first transit plan for voter approval, the company, in a joint venture with another firm called Bechtel Civil Inc., oversaw the design and construction of Boston's Big Dig. The legendary project, a multi-billion dollar effort to bury 7.5 miles of Boston's central artery roadway underground, would eventually become the mother of all US transportation project fiascos. While the project was highly complex and didn't involve light rail like Charlotte-Mecklenburg's transit plan does, the fraud and cost overruns that have come to be associated with Big Dig have made national news -- and call into question the corporate practices of the company that to date has played a major guiding role in our own city's transit plan. In 1985, when Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff was hired to oversee it, the project had an estimated cost of $2.6 billion and a completion date of 1998. Today, the project has a projected completion date of 2005, and its price tag has ballooned to $14.6 billion and climbing. And that doesn't even count the millions of dollars various state and federal agencies have spent on more than 15 separate investigations of the project's managers, which included Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff, for shoddy design, construction and engineering, fraud and corruption.
"You do have to monitor them," Massachusetts Former Secretary of Transportation Frederick Salvucci told the Boston Globe about Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff in September 1994. "But the most important role of your monitoring is to make sure that you're getting what you paid for, and yeah, you don't want them going crazy on costs. You need a lot of public employees to do that."
Three months later, a report released by Massachusetts State Inspector General Robert Cerasoli's office proved Salvucci right. The report blamed the state highway department and Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff for cost overruns and systematic problems on the project. It also suggested that Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff and another contractor attempted to cover up costly charges in several cases and presented incomplete and inaccurate information to project officials about the work.
It would be six more years before the truth about Big Dig would finally become widespread public knowledge. In 2000 -- the year our local transit officials and the Charlotte City Council awarded four contracts worth $2.6 million to Parsons Brinckerhoff for transit advisory services for CATS, the North and Northeast Corridor Major Investment studies, pedestrian controls along the South Corridor, and North Corridor rail assistance -- the company's reputation hit rock bottom in Boston.
Almost every month in 2000, there was one shocking revelation or another about Big Dig.
It started with a report released by State Auditor Joseph DeNucci in February of that year which concluded that, because of failures by Bechtel-Parsons, at least $19 million was wasted on useless design work in the Fort Point Channel section of the project because the company ignored concerns about unusually soft soils in the area. Had DeNucci's earlier warnings to transit officials to take cost control responsibilities away from Bechtel-Parsons been heeded, things might have turned out differently. Instead, DeNucci went on to make a career of sniping at the Bechtel-Parsons and transit officials. In 11 other reports, he documented $446 million in additional waste on the project because cost-reduction methods weren't applied.
But by year's end, DeNucci's findings would be dwarfed by reports and accusations of large-scale corruption that reached the highest levels of government.
In April 2000, a Federal Highway Administration audit concluded that Bechtel-Parsons and state officials misled the federal government, which was funding part of the project, about $1.4 billion in cost overruns. (The true figure was later discovered to be $2.2 billion.) That announcement prompted a US Senate probe overseen by Sen. John McCain, who blistered Bechtel-Parsons' representatives during hearings for open-ended cost hikes on the project. Not to be left out of the action, a fraud and corruption investigation was launched jointly that June by the FBI's Public Corruption Unit, the Department of Labor, the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Department of Transportation. By the end of the month, the Securities and Exchange Commission piled on as well, launching an investigation into whether Big Dig officials and Bechtel-Parsons failed to disclose the project's real cost to bond investors in financial statements prepared in 1999.
When asked if the company had a responsibility to inform the public about the true costs of the project, a company spokesman who asked not to be named told The Boston Globe that Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff didn't have a responsibility to share that information with anyone except their clients, the Massachusetts Highway Department and the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.
In July, a whistleblower filed a federal suit against Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff, charging the companies had made at least $10 million in false claims while billing the government for costs.
The same month, a memo from Big Dig project counsel Anthony Battelle surfaced indicating that Big Dig officials and Parsons Brinckerhoff knew they may have been violating the state's prevailing-wage law by underpaying truck drivers for more than three years before they were forced to add $20 million to the project budget to pay them back wages. (When the scandal broke in 1996, Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff and state transportation executives denied any knowledge of violating the law. The memo proving otherwise was dated October 1, 1993.)
Then in August, a Boston Herald investigation revealed that Massachusetts Governors Paul Celluci and William Weld and numerous other state and city politicians had had numerous relatives and cronies added to Big Dig's payroll by getting them assigned to the payrolls of Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff and other subcontractors who then billed the state for their salaries despite the fact that many of them didn't actually show up for work. By October, Attorney General Tom Reilly had hired a high-powered private international detective agency to help ferret out corruption within Big Dig.
Things only got worse in 2001 -- the year Parsons Brinckerhoff was awarded two more transit contracts totaling $1.8 million for work on Mecklenburg County's transit system. In January 2001, a Massachusetts state inspector general's report came out showing that Big Dig officials had done little to recoup money from Bechtel-Parsons after mistakes by engineers caused $83.5 million worth of change orders. The report recommended that the Turnpike Authority cut ties with Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff, but by then it was too late. Transit officials had already scrambled to renew Bechtel-Parsons' contract for another five years.
It wasn't just the Turnpike Authority that Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff had somehow managed to wrap around its finger. Another state inspector general's report released in March showed the stunning reach of the company's political power and influence.
According to the report, Big Dig project officials and Bechtel-Parsons had conspired with state officials and the Federal Highway Administration to hide the true $14 billion cost of the project from the public, bond investors and Wall Street. According to the inspector general's report, Bechtel-Parsons accurately reported to then-governor Bill Weld in 1994 that the project's true cost would be $13.8 billion.
"After Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff presented its $14 billion estimate in 1994, state managers directed state and Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff staff to undertake a cooperative effort to maintain the fiction of an "on-time' and "on-budget' $8 billion project," the report said. "Records show that they did so by applying a largely semantic series of exclusions, deductions, and accounting assumptions that covered up the $6 billion difference."
The next month, Inspector General Robert Cerasoli released a 1995 memo written by a budget manager at Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff that summarized instructions that Bechtel-Parsons received from then-transportation secretary James Kerasiotes.
"It should be noted that Secretary Kerasiotes at the Federal Highway Administration briefing stated that he expected this value to be below $8.0 billion prior to releasing to the public," the memo read. Not surprisingly, the cost figure officially unveiled to the public was $7.997 billion.
That revelation sheds new light on a July 2002 report in the Charlotte Observer headlined "Price Tag of Transit is Soaring, Projections More Than Double, Critics Say the Public Was Had," in which the paper reported that it was still a mystery why the original cost estimate for our transit plan drawn up by Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas did not account for inflation, despite the fact that former Charlotte City Council members Mike Jackson and Don Reid repeatedly questioned whether it had been factored in.
At the time, Parsons Brinckerhoff didn't return the Observer's calls for comment. When Creative Loafing tried to get a comment from the company on this oversight, we were referred back and forth between their Charlotte and Raleigh offices. The only Parsons Brinckerhoff official willing to talk to about the situation, a manager from the Raleigh office who asked that his name not be used, said that the employee who oversaw the project is no longer with the company and no one knows why inflation wasn't factored in.
Despite the confusion over the real cost of the project, in 2002, the company was awarded two more contracts by Charlotte City Council totaling $3.5 million for work on CATS' New Bus Maintenance Facility and a transit-oriented development workshop.
Meanwhile, in Boston, the Turnpike Authority board of directors also awarded contracts to two consultant groups. Their job, as described in the Boston Herald, was to act as "independent watchdogs" and to "baby-sit" Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff for the remainder of the Big Dig project.
Flirting with Disaster In LA
Before the Big Dig officially went bad in Boston, Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas was up to its knees in trouble on the other side of the country. In 1995, the world watched as a massive sinkhole swallowed 80 feet of Hollywood Boulevard and buildings began to crack, buckle and sink several inches. In its wake, more than 1,000 lawsuits totaling more than a billion dollars in damages were filed against the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) by angry business and property owners. When the dust cleared, a forensic engineering firm hired by the MTA reported that EMC, an engineering partnership between principal partners Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas and a company called Daniel Mann Johnson & Mendenhall, had signed off on the faulty digging plan blamed for the disaster.
A former tunnel digger, Rocky Woody, who was employed by one of the subcontractors on the job, told the New Times of Los Angeles that he was amazed by the problems Parsons-Dillingham inspectors ignored.
"They sat right up there the whole time while we were mining and, no matter what was happening, they turned their heads and looked away," Woody told the paper. "We poured four to six inches of concrete where there was supposed to be 12, and they just turned their heads away."
By the time the boulevard collapsed, the people of Los Angeles were used to the sudden sinkage of parts of the famous roadway. In August 1994, tunneling was halted on the Los Angeles Red Line, the 4.4-mile stretch of subway that's supposed to be the centerpiece of hundreds of miles of transit lines in the Metro rail system. Sidewalks along Hollywood Boulevard above the project had begun to sink and crack, eventually dropping up to 10 inches in some places. An engineering firm hired by the MTA eventually reported that the substitution of wood wedges for steel supports was approved by engineers employed by Parsons Brinckerhoff and the project's construction manager, Parsons-Dillingham. Parsons-Dillingham is a partnership between Dillingham Construction and Parsons Corp., a separate company with no relationship to the similarly named Parsons Brinckerhoff. Parsons Corp. is a parent company of Parsons Transportation Group, the consultants hired in 2000 by CATS and the Charlotte City Council to do the engineering, environmental studies and the planning for stations and land use for the South Boulevard light rail line, for which they're being paid $5.8 million.
Multiple whistleblower lawsuits have shed some light on how engineering snafus might have caused the hole in Hollywood Boulevard. In 1994, Ben Pate, a former Metro Rail tunnel quality control inspector, was awarded $1.38 million by a Superior Court jury in a suit against his former employer, Parsons-Dillingham. In the suit, he alleged he was fired for refusing to approve what he called "shoddy and improper workmanship."
Engineer James Hamilton won a settlement of $200,000 in a lawsuit against Parsons Dillingham and the MTA's construction arm after claiming he was fired for raising concerns about health and safety violations on the Metro Rail Line. Another worker, Nelson McIntire, alleged that he was fired from the project for exposing the threat of gas explosions and other safety hazards on the construction site. McIntire's claim was settled for less than $200,000.
But construction flaws were the least of the MTA's problems with the two companies. By 1998, when Parsons-Dillingham and EMC began wrapping up the project, it was $900 million over the original subway budget established in the mid-1980s and MTA auditors still couldn't account for what happened to all the money.
What is known is that 11 of the 12 design, engineering and management contracts for the project grew from a starting price of $227 million to $670 million; most of the cost increase -- $428 million - came from a contract with Parsons Dillingham for construction oversight and a contract with EMC to design Metro Rail, according to a report prepared for the Federal Transportation Administration.
After questions were raised by the media about the escalating costs of the project, the MTA put out a statement which said that as the scope of rail projects was further defined, the company's contracts were altered through change orders. But the scope of those change orders was often staggering. An investigation by The Daily News of Los Angeles found that in one case, EMC initially reported committing just over $500,000 worth of work to four subcontractors but wound up paying them over $43 million. In another case, an MTA inspector general's audit showed that EMC billed $14 million for "unidentified subcontractors doing unspecified work" on a rail line.
Accountant J. Martin Gerlinger won a $300,000 settlement with Parsons Dillingham in a suit in which he claimed he was fired after pointing out in a meeting with supervisors that the firm had illegally overcharged the MTA by $20 million.
How They Get Away With It
By now, readers are probably wondering how these companies have managed to stay afloat in the transit world and hang on to their contracts. The answer to that question is a complex one.
Despite the numerous scandals Parsons Brinckerhoff has weathered over the years, the company has a rich history in American transit engineering. It was responsible for the New York subway system, the Hoover Dam and the Alaskan Oil pipeline. Since it was founded in 1885, it has been one of the oldest continually operating consulting engineering firms in the US and its more than 9,000 employees have been responsible for thousands of projects on six continents. Ditto for Parsons Corp., whose more than 9,000 employees have been operating in 50 states and 40 foreign countries since the company was founded in 1944.
Over time, the companies appear to have grown to be adept at two things: manipulating the boards that oversee them and negotiating ambiguous, open-ended contracts that make it difficult to fire them or hold them responsible for anything that goes wrong on the project.
It's not surprising that company money seems to find its way into the pockets of politicians who oversee transit projects. A 1994 Los Angeles Times investigation revealed that, over the previous decade, the handful of elected officials who served on the MTA board -- similar to the MTC board here -- accepted more than $500,000 in campaign contributions from subcontractors, lobbyists, lawyers and other firms connected to Parsons-Dillingham and EMC. Former LA Mayor Tom Bradley alone collected $45,000 from Metro Rail contractors.
Has it gone on here? How much if any money these companies have donated to the six mayors from the Mecklenburg towns and cities who sit on the MTC board here is hard to tell. The campaign reports of Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory and former county commission chair Parks Helms, who chaired the MTC until recently, are riddled with donations from individuals whose employer isn't listed, as the law requires. During the 2002 election cycle, NC Senator Elizabeth Dole accepted $5,000 from the Parsons Corp. PAC.
The firms' ability to bond with the boards that oversee them seems to go beyond just doling out campaign cash. Both firms are known for becoming so intermeshed with the government transit agencies that hire them and the transit boards that oversee them that it's difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. In California, some critics refer to the MTA, the board that was supposed to be overseeing the contractors, as a "front for the EMC." What they're trying to describe is the almost eerie way in which public officials seem to avoid any oversight of the contractors, even after embarrassing public revelations that the companies were deliberately over-billing them, withholding information from them or causing other problems.
At times, the sheer brazenness of the "Teflon contractors" and the MTA's response to them was almost comical. The same month Hollywood Boulevard caved in, for instance, MTA auditors discovered, while auditing EMC's books, that the consortium spent nearly $2 million of taxpayer money on changes to a planned rail line in Pasadena without bothering to get MTA authorization. But despite incidents like this, again and again public officials overseeing both Big Dig and the Los Angeles Red Line turned their heads, despite multiple promises to the public to fire them.
At one point, MTA CEO Franklin White publicly vowed to cut Parsons-Dillingham loose after federal officials threatened to permanently take away over $1 billion in federal funding for the Red Line. But it was White, not the companies, who would eventually lose his job over the cost and construction fiascos on the project. While Parsons-Dillingham did lose a part of its contract worth about $50 million as punishment, the MTA board went on to award them another $58 million contract for three more portions of the Red Line. Despite investigation reports that showed that EMC and Parsons-Dillingham signed off on the wood-for-steel substitution, the MTA fired one of their less-connected subcontractors for supposedly causing the fiasco and then paid Parsons-Dillingham $7 million to oversee repairs to the Hollywood streets the company was responsible for sinking. EMC was paid nearly $900,000 to design sinkhole repair work.
In Boston, where public officials have never bothered to attempt to reclaim the tens of millions Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff illegally billed them for fixing its own design errors, the companies remain on the job today.
Part of the problem here is that firing these companies once they've become entrenched in a project isn't easy. In August of 2001, Boston Turnpike Authority officials exploring ways to boot Bechtel-Parsons Brinckerhoff from the project and still meet their completion date ran into a common problem. There were only a handful of firms in the world capable of completing the project, and the long legal battle necessary to terminate the contract would have dragged the project out even further. A similar thing happened in Los Angeles after state legislators blasted MTA officials for allowing Parsons Dillingham and EMC to stay on the job after numerous mishaps. An Arthur Andersen audit concluded that the MTA would risk a bruising court battle if it attempted to fire EMC because its contract was riddled with "ambiguity." The MTA also discovered it couldn't afford to dump Parsons-Dillingham either because the agency needed the company on its side in court as it battled the more than a thousand lawsuits the two companies left in their wake.
Perhaps the most powerful asset these companies have in their court is their political pull. Over time, the companies developed powerful federal political connections they continue to nurture every year by donating hundreds of thousands of dollars to national politicians and the two political parties. Those connections in turn can be used to help municipalities looking to win money in the highly competitive battle for the federal transportation dollars without which most rail projects, including ours, won't happen. Lobbying by Parsons Brinckerhoff Chairman Marty Rubin in Washington in the 1980s was one of the reasons Congress approved billions for the LA transit project the company later worked on.
The companies' power appears to extend far beyond just jockeying for federal dollars. Both appear to be virtually immune to federal civil or criminal investigation. The Los Angeles New Times reported in 1997 that investigations into the Red Line announced by the FBI, the US Attorney's office and the US Department of Transportation have never yielded any public results. Ditto for the 2000 joint investigation launched by Federal Highway Administration, FBI's Public Corruption Unit, the Department of Labor and the Federal Department of Transportation -- an investigation that was tainted by the state inspector general's report findings that Big Dig project officials and Bechtel-Parsons had conspired with state officials and the Federal Highway Administration to hide the true $14 billion cost of the project from the public. In fact, the vast majority of the dirt that's been uncovered on both projects has been the result of investigations by the media, by independent state auditors or inspectors or by the boards that oversaw these projects after public opinion demanded it.
Where the Money Goes, Nobody Knows
Given the history of large transit projects around the world, it may be that officials everywhere have trouble getting a handle on the half-dozen or so construction companies in the world capable of overseeing the creation of mass transit systems. In a worldwide study of the cost estimating on 258 transit projects called "Underestimating Costs in Public Works Projects: Error or Lie?" Danish professor Bent Flyvbjerg and his colleagues found that underestimating costs and overestimating rail ridership in initial studies of whether an area needs a mass transit system seems to be an industry tradition. In 9 out of 10 transportation infrastructure projects, Flyvbjerg found, costs are underestimated and for rail projects actual costs are on average 45 percent higher than estimated costs. The situation is not a product of lack of experience with a certain type of transit, either. The average percentage by which the cost of these projects is underestimated hasn't varied in 30 years. Excluding cases in which major design changes were made as the project went along, Flyvbjerg found that project promoters routinely "ignore, hide, or otherwise leave out important project costs and risks in order to make total costs appear low" and sell the public on the project.
Overseeing companies this powerful, experienced and well connected isn't easy for any municipality working on a transit project. Most of the cost overruns on American transit projects come in the form of change orders that alter the original contract of the contractors working on the project. To have 10 to 20 percent of the project's final cost come from change orders is fairly standard in the transit construction industry. On a project like Charlotte-Mecklenburg's with a $2.1 billion price tag, the documentation on change orders can fill whole rooms and require a full-time staff just to process. Over-billing by contractors is another way millions of dollars can go out the door undetected. That, too, requires a full staff of auditors to keep up with. Without this kind of structured oversight, things go awry. MTA officials still can't account for what happened to all of the $900 million in cost overruns on the Red Line and Big Dig officials have forfeited millions of unaccounted-for dollars to contractors because the statute of limitations on filing claims to get the money back has run out.

Lynn,
You are correct I should have checked my facts. Bremerton gets more rain per year than Daytona. If you want you can go to the weather website and do a comparison. Next I went to the speed website and I checked the schedules did you know that there are race tracks in Memphis, Tn, St. Louis, Mo, Sparta, Ky, Nashville, Tn, Milwaukee, Wi, Pikes Peak, Co that are NASCAR caliber but are not used? There are more tracks but I honestly do not know if they meet NASCAR requirements. Now if they do come can you please inform me about the great economic impact. I find it hard to believe four days of economic activity will be the driver for the other three hundred and sixty one. I have been to NASCAR events and local vendors only see a limited result. The amount of taxes that will be gained will have to go to cover the strain on the infrastructure. Would you like an example go to the Gorge in George and ask the police force and government officials if that venue has been a great economic engine for the area. When I was a truck driver I got to see a lot of the areas where these tracks are located I saw for myself not everyone benifits.

NASCAR, I really wish the elected officials of Kitsap county would listen to the majority of the resedents, instead of the few that don't want it.

I now see after reading the other blog inputs that there are good arguments for all these options. However, all considered, a surface Hwy 99 option, with E-W over or underpasses would save enough money to do the arena. A free parking garage or two near the waterfront should be included in a surface plan.

An arena wouldn't be just for the Sonics, which I couldn't care less about, but would bring in other entertainment and convention opportunities and tax money.

Fast cars and horses are fine but I don't want to pay for them at all.

The money should be spent on giving a break for the property tax payers all over the state. Do not need another dumb sports areana, or a nascar race track.... Use the money that you people pay in taxes and the surplus the state has for giving property owners a tax break.. It is a no Brainer

Send the Sonics packing, dig a tunnel, bring on the car racing.

Regarding the new tunnel or Viaduct, MAKE IT A TOLL. If we in Gig Harbor have to be bent over to travel in our state so should Seattle. Most of Gig Harbor VOTED NO for the new bridge and some how it was pushed on us.

Good for the goose good for the gander!!!! TUNNEL AND MAKE IT A TOLL......

Give us tax breaks! That's all I can say.

INDEPENDENCE FOR TAIWAN!

Tu nnel and Nascar, we should not build another arena when so few Nw people like basketball anyway. Nascar track would be a great money maker for the state and I would like it in Snohomish County as previously planned. The tunnel is far better than the viaduct. Place a toll on the tunnel, I-90, US-2, I-5 at Olympia, Seattle and North of Arlington, place tolls on all bridges; let the people using these routes pay for the maintenance and the need to build more roads and bridges. The Eastcoast has had tolls for years, why not Washington State. All the trucking through our State requires alot of maintenance on the roadway, yet they really aren't paying their fair share. Use the surplus money that Wa. State has on schools and let the users of the roads pay for them. BUT, definitely build the tunnel. Look at the tunnel under Mobile Bay, it was two lanes all my childhood, now there are two tunnels going East and West since the I-10 expanded. Lets get with the program that all the other areas in the US has already forged ahead with and build a tunnel and bring NASCAR here.

Even though I'm a Lewis County resident, I say none of the above suggestions should be where the tax dollars go. Health, education, and transportation are all more worthy of the billions of dollars at stake. I-5 needs improvments throughout the entire state. State highways are in shambles, dangerous, and outdated. Our education system is a joke. The money & time spent on the WASL over the past few years has been a waste, and more money is needed still to fix the problems. At least half of our residents dont have ample health insurance, including babies and young children.

While I'm on a roll, imagine what the money could do for the enviroment. Or the understaffed, underfunded police & fire departments all over the state.

I say, if Seattle residents need a major road improvment, build a toll road. Why should a farmer in Euphrata have to pay taxes on a road he will never use?

Raise the price of Sonics tickets if they want a new stadium. Most of Washington residents are too poor to afford tickets as it is; why should we have to pay taxes on a new stadium?

The NASCAR idea seems like it should be an economy boost, but its more likely to be a financial drain on the state budget, a headache to those living in the area, and a huge disaster for the local law enforcment. There can't be a boost in tourisim without a boost in crime.

The equestiran center won't bring crime & falling property values, but what exactly will it bring to the state? And, just like with the Seattle Viaduct, why should the entire state pay for a local project? Someone in Spokane is going to pay for a $80 million dollar project they will NEVER see.

Our state law makers & money spenders need to be better trained in financial matters. If the basic needs of the state can not be paid for due to lack of budget; then (besides the deteriorating Viaduct) optional projects should be of NO importance whatsoever.

NASCAR should get our support!
Seattle'shate for this makes us want it even more.

Wake up folks! We are being held hostage by those who can more then aford to build the stadium of thier dreams. Remember those words
"thier dreams". Wy don't they get Haliburton to
pitch in too. We should be helping those who
truely make a contribution to our future. Our
teachers! We can't all be race car drivers and
overpaid hoped up sports figures. We need smart
people with the strength to stand up for Truth
and justice.