In the last two days I had the amazing experience of meeting with the editorial boards of both the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
It was part of my rounds as a member of the de facto opposition to the Seattle Families and Education Levy, which is on the September primary ballot. We're talking to community groups and the media about the serious flaws in the levy proposal and encouraging the editorial boards to recommend a NO vote on the levy.
Yesterday I went to the Times with Andy MacDonald and Pat Dolan, who helped write the opposition statement for the voters' guide. We met with Editorial Page Editor James Vesely, Associate Editor Lee Moriwaki and writers Bruce Ramsey and Lynne Varner. Today Andy and I faced off against two levy proponents in front of the P-I's Editorial Page Editor Mark Trahant and writers Joe Copeland and Tom Shapley.
All of these editorial folks know about the Shark Blog. Some of them even read it on occasion. One claimed that "it sometimes makes my blood boil". Nevertheless, they all gave us a cordial welcome, listened carefully to our arguments and asked a lot of good questions.
Folks at both newspapers seemed to have mixed feelings about this year's levy. They recognized the unimpressive accomplishments of earlier versions of the levy (which even the levy's supporters acknowledge), inadequate accountability going forward and the hefty increase in the tax over the last time. On the other hand, both groups seemed reluctant to actually kill the levy, citing the concern that some essential programs would lose their funding and some children would lose out as a result.
My argument in response is that there may in fact be some programs that are more desirable to keep than others. We can restore the most beneficial programs with a better designed levy next year. The trade-off is between being stuck with an overpriced levy without adequate accountability for 7 years, vs. holding off on starting new programs for another year while also changing a few priorities in the School District's budget for the current year. (It's not as if the School District doesn't have some waste, fraud and abuse it can't get rid of).
I also gave some free political advice to the Mayor's representative at the P-I meeting today: If the Mayor and City Council want the public to accept their assurances that the new levy will deliver accountability and measurable results that didn't exist with the previous levies, start with a full accounting of the last 14 years and $138 million. Show us where all that money went. Explain what was accomplished. Show us which programs were successful and should be continued. Show us which programs were unsuccessful and are discontinued. Explain the specific lessons that were learned from both the successful and unsuccessful programs and how those lessons will shape the new programs.
The P-I writers seemed to like that idea. I hope both papers would require such an accounting as a pre-condition for offering their endorsement of the new levy. After all, without a serious accounting of past performance -- which has to include candid admissions of specific failures and lessons learned -- why should any of us take seriously the promises of "increased accountability" for future programs?
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at August 13, 2004 11:14 PM