The Muni League on the Levy

The Municipal League of King County recommends a vote IN FAVOR of the Seattle Families and Education Levy. The Muni League's mission is

To promote good government that is open, effective and accountable in order to improve the caliber of public officials and the quality of public decisions ...

and to that end

Each year, the Municipal League's ballot issues committee interviews experts and delves deeply into the intricacies of statewide and local ballot issues to assess the likely impacts of each measure.

I met with the Muni League's issues committee last month to present the opposition case against the levy. So naturally I was curious to delve deeply into the League's final assessment of the levy. How did they do?

1. They called the measure the "Family and Education Levy". A small detail that won't affect anybody's vote, but it still makes me wonder what other intricacies their deep delving missed.

2. They note that

The Family [sic] and Education (F&E) Levy, administered by the City, is in addition to the Seattle Public Schools operating levy of $2.39 per thousand that was passed in February of this year.

Actually, the public school operating levy that passed in February of this year would only cost about $1.29 per thousand. A small detail that won't affect anybody's vote, but it still makes me wonder what other intricacies their deep delving missed -- especially since this compounds an earlier Muni League error that I brought to the Muni League's attention (on three different occasions).

3. They report that

The Levy funds will be focused on five areas of need

and reproduce a table of figures provided by the levy campaign. In fact, the above "will" should be changed to "might". Even a superficial reading of the complete text of the ballot initiative reveals that these allocations are "only illustrative examples", and there is no actual requirement to fund any of them. A large detail that could easily affect a lot of people's votes, and I really wonder what other intricacies their deep delving missed.

4. They report that

The Ballot Issues Committee was unable to identify an organized opposition to the levy, but spoke to a number of concerned citizens who raised the following arguments against the levy

There is no registered campaign committee, but we in the opposition were sufficiently well organized to produce a voters' guide statement, do more basic research (i.e. "delve deeply") into the levy than the Muni League apparently did, and organize a collection of web pages about the levy that provides far more information about the levy than the Muni League provides. Their report could at least include a link to our website, but it doesn't.

5. The report does include a list of our arguments against the levy. But it fails to include some of our most important arguments, most notably that the initiative is essentially a blank check to the City Council to raise and spend $117 million, without any requirement that the money be spent on any of the programs that are mentioned in the campaign statements, or for that matter, even be spent on education.

6. The conclusion states:

The League supports the goal and intent of the Levy to improve academic achievement and provide additional services to at-risk children and youth.

This is interesting, because the only stated goal and intent of the levy is to "support student academic achievement". What are the "additional services" they believe will be provided? Are they seriously recommending that we vote for an initiative with the hope that it will deliver upon unstated goals and intents? This doesn't seem to be a very good way of promoting "good government that is open, effective and accountable".

Whenever I delve deeply into the Muni League's "deep delving", I invariably come away unimpressed.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at August 27, 2004 10:53 AM