I am also voting no on King County Proposition 1. Two of many reasons are fiscal issues and the environment.

One of the Voter Pamphlet statement signers in favor of Prop 1 is Mary McCumber, who was director of the Puget Sound Regional Council when PSRC approved removing commercial service at Paine Field from consideration as an alternative to the third runway. It is interesting to ask, "How much traffic could be removed from I-5 and I-405 if Paine Field had commercial service? How does the cost of opening Paine compare to the cost spending on freeways and rail?"

Unfortunately, asking these questions is not politically correct. Other innovations, such as the bus service Microsoft is operating where employees can access the Internet or Microsoft's move to open offices in Seattle, show there are many approaches to reducing congestion and handling growth that are not in the plans.

The Seattle Times story on Oct. 12 has two key quotes about the rail portion: "There is no cost cap or deadline for completion," and "Sound Transit's own Citizen Oversight Panel is disputing an important financial assumption. The agency's view that operating costs would rise only 5 percent a year is 'unsustainable over time,' the panel says. Members suggest 9 percent." This contrasts with some limits on road costs and opportunities for change if costs rise significantly.

Ron Sims in his Seattle Times op-ed of Sept. 27 (seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003905815_ronsims27.html) raised another issue: the taxes to pay for rail are likely going to last 50 years. Locking future generations into taxes this long seems wrong. They will need maximum flexibility to deal with the trillions of federal government IOUs as well as many other challenges.

One of those challenges is climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will release an updated report in November about accelerating emissions. A scientist familiar with the data used in the report says, "We are already at great risk of dangerous climate change, that's what these figures say. It's not next year or next decade, it's now."

In a story at www.crosscut.com on Oct. 10, the head of Sightline, a think tank based in Seattle, says the general purpose roadways portion of the measure would increase CO2 emissions by 15 million tons. He also states there are a lot of complicated tradeoffs to the rail and other portions of Prop 1. Sightline is neutral on Prop 1.

My point: Prop 1 has very some very complex environmental tradeoffs and the fiscal picture is murky. I would challenge readers to conduct their own research before voting.

Stuart Jenner

Burien