Public Interest Transportation Forum - http://www.bettertransport.info/pitf

Sound Transit's Future Projections of Operating and Maintenance Costs are Willful Fraud

by Emory Bundy

In a report prepared for the Washington State Auditor, I have summarized the evidence of Sound Transit's record of fraudulent representations of operating and maintenance (O&M) costs in the execution of its Sound Move Plan, as well as the manner in which analogous misrepresentations are now projected by the agency decades into the future. Sound Transit's current projections establish that the O&M costs so erroneously represented in 1996 were not the product of mere incompetence, but willful fraud.

That report is posted here: www.bettertransport.info/fraud/.

It was clear to the ECONorthwest economic consulting firm, as it reported in October 1996, and the national panel of experts who reviewed its study, that Sound Transit's projected O&M costs in its Sound Move Ten Year Regional Transit Plan were erroneous. Over time, events have confirmed that observation. During the past two years Sound Transit's own hand-picked Citizen Oversight Panel has urged the agency to change its ways, and adopt realistic O&M predictions, to no avail.

Should Sound Transit succeed in continuing these actions, the adverse impacts on the public interest will be extreme. Just as Sound Transit is unable to complete and operate the components of its Sound Move Plan as it promised to do in 1996, the gap between its promises and its performance in the coming decades is likely to be even greater.

While analogous fraudulent actions by agents of publicly-traded corporations subject those responsible to the risk of felony indictments and convictions -- like those meted out recently to executives from WorldCom and Enron -- it is an anomaly of our system of government that representatives of public agencies, entrusted with taxing authority and the stewardship of public resources, are not held to the same standards. They can lie and commit fraud with impunity. It is only the political and regulatory system, and the fourth estate, that can curb those violations of the public interest. The authority conveyed to the State Auditor by a citizen initiative to conduct a performance audit of Sound Transit places oversight responsibility for such misconduct directly and firmly in the Auditor's hands.

Emory Bundy is a graduate of the University of Washington and University of California at Los Angeles, and a former professor of political science at Oberlin College and University of East Africa. He has served as head of staff of a member of Congress and as the Director of Public Affairs at King Broadcasting Company during 1969-83. He received the Society of Professional Journalists' national public affairs award for "The Eighth Day," a televised documentary on the future of the environment of the Puget Sound region, 1971. Later, he was director of the Bullitt Foundation. He is also an avid bicyclist.

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                                                                    Last modified: October 21, 2008