Dow Constantine for King County executive
October 28, 2009
By Staff
The outcome of the race for King County executive will have a significant effect on our urban cities and surrounding unincorporated areas, which makes the choice a critical one. We’ve seen what happens when the leadership is misdirected and we’re looking forward to change.
Dow Constantine is our preferred choice.His education and background are the right credentials. He is well grounded in the nitty-gritty details the county executive needs to master. He has a master’s degree in urban planning and has practiced law for 19 years. His volunteer years included efforts to preserve open space, and he later worked with disgruntled rural landowners for to find solutions to the critical areas ordinance.
As a seven seven-year King County Council member, Constantine initiated county performance audits and has plans to use them to find and implement cost cuts. He has allies in the Washington State Legislature where he served in the House and Senate. As chair of the County Council’s budget committee, he led the charge to cut the former executive’s budget.
Constantine has spelled-out detailed plans to overhaul Metro bus routes to match today’s needs, to make Sound Transit operations more efficient and to seek more stable sources of revenue for transit. From the get-go, he has been committed to keeping urban county parks open until a transfer of ownership is completed, and to keeping police officers off the budget-cut list. We also like his plan to have a staff person assigned to work with small cities and rural areas.
Susan Hutchison, Dow’s opponent, has many fresh ideas, but they are ideas not yet grounded in substance. For example, she now thinks State Route 520 should be the cross-lake route for light rail, even though voters approved a crossing over Interstate 90 — which was designed for just that purpose.
She touts her nonpartisan roots without seeming to understand that nonpartisan does not mean she won’t need political savvy.
We question her integrity — as evidenced by the details of her dismissal from her television career — and her commitment to public service — as as evidenced by her dismissing as unimportant the fact thatat she missed voting in eight elections in the past eight years.
We encourage voters to think carefully about this vote. We think you’ll agree that Constantine is the better choice.
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One Response to “Dow Constantine for King County executive”
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Good points. I was undecided, but now I agree that Constantine will do a better job with our tax money.
Speaking of taxes, we often think Port of Seattle doesn’t impact us over here, but we pay property taxes to the Port of Seattle ($76 million this year).
Here’s what you should know about port candidates Tom Albro (http://bit.ly/4gpg5h) and David Doud (http://bit.ly/CbiIs) before you vote for Port of Seattle. Surprisingly, both are taking money from the port’s insiders. I don’t think they can be trusted with our tax dollars.