Levy Weasel Logic

At yesterday's levy debate before The Stranger editorial board, I saw for myself the extent to which some of the levy campaigners are willing to behave like shameless weasels in service of their proposed tax increase.

Weaselism #1
Levy campaign manager Julien Loh had been quoted in the P-I on August 20:

Loh said public comment so far has shown no sign that voters will balk at a $116.8 million levy.

"We haven't got any push back from voters that we've gone out to talk to," he said.

This claim is astonishing, given that the pro-levy campaign would have received our voters' guide opposition statement as early as July 23. Julien was personally aware of the opposition no later than August 2, when the Muni League sent us both the same e-mail confirming the times of our back-to-back appearances before the League's ballot issues committee. Andy MacDonald and I also debated representatives of the levy campaign at the P-I's offices on August 13. I asked Julien upon our introduction at The Stranger:

So are you the same Julien Loh who told the P-I last week that there is no voter pushback to the levy?

His reply:

What I said was that there was no pushback from the voters that we've gone out to talk to

I guess one has to be very careful about parsing the statement "the voters that we've gone out to talk to". Who did they bother to "gone out to talk to", other than, say, Julien's brother-in-law? And if statements made to, say, a newspaper don't count as "public comment", then you have to assume that comments expressed in, say, e-mail or American Sign Language wouldn't be acknowledged as "talk to".

Anybody who is thinking of voting FOR this initiative to approve a $117 million tax increase should make sure to read between the lines of the weaselly initiative text at least as carefully as one has to read between the lines of Julien Loh's weaselly statements to the P-I.

Weaselism #2
The pleasant young lady representing the City government, when challenged to explain why earlier levy programs weren't evaluated for their contributions to academic achievement, claimed that

before No Child Left Behind and before the WASL there was no educational measurement

Nonsense. It's easy to locate Seattle School District statistical reports that show that the WASL has been given since 1998; The School District has been keeping records of grades, standardized test scores and graduation rates for decades.

Weaselism #3
When pressed to explain the 69% increase in the requested funding, the answer was "the community told us there was a need for it", referring to the Levy Citizen Advisory Committee. Let's conduct a thought experiment. Suppose that you handpick as "representatives of the community" a panel of 42 advocates for increased social services spending, many of whose livelihoods depend on social services spending, and you ask them to formulate a proposal for future spending for social services. Do you think they will they propose to (a) increase, or (b) decrease, the amount of spending? Please, no wagering.

Weaselism #4
After explaining that (a) the focus of the levy has completely changed so that (b) old programs will be dropped; that the funding will increase by 69% so that (c) new programs can be added; and that (d) the funding for school-crossing guards has been moved from the city's general fund to the discretionary levy; we are also told that if this levy fails to pass, essential programs will have no funding. Hmmm. If the levy has changed so much that we have brand new programs (and 69% more of them), then these brand new programs aren't really essential, because not only have we lived without them all these years, but because they're new, we don't even know whether or not they accomplish very much. This bit about the school crossing guards looks particularly bogus, because it suggests that it was cynically thrown into the discretionary levy pool precisely to create a false sense of emergency. "We can't possibly vote this down, we'd have no crossing guards!"

And that's exactly why you should vote it down, because otherwise these weasels will never learn. And don't worry about the crossing guards. You know the City Council will still find a way to pay for the crossing guards no matter what.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at August 28, 2004 04:09 PM | Email This