6/3/2009 12:19:00 PM Economy is job No. 1 in Phillips' bid
King County Executive candidate Larry Phillips rides the Link light rail, a project he has worked on as county councilor and the type of infrastructure work he will concentrate on if he is elected in November.
Larry Phillips has spent most of his adult life in politics and law, and has made marks defending labor, building support for mass transit, education and public health.
This year he is taking steps deeper into the miasma of politics, making a bid for King County Executive.
As outgoing executive Ron Sims moves to Washington, D.C., to be President Barack Obama's deputy secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, he leaves a three-term legacy and work that needs to seen through. Phillips, currently a King County councilor serving several Seattle neighborhoods including Magnolia and Queen Anne, wants to pick up where Sims left off and do even more. And revitalizing the economy is his first order of business.
"I want to move that forward, build infrastructure such as light rail, the viaduct replacement project, getting state Route 520 up and going," he said. "Everybody benefits if we support economic development. Light rail, the viaduct-those would put people to work for years, and all those dollars would be spent in the local economy."
The $18 billion Link light rail project is Phillips' best example of how large regional projects can create jobs and spark ancillary development, sort of the state's own stimulus package. The first leg of the light-rail system, from Tukwila to downtown Seattle opens July 18 and is $135 million under budget, he said. The next leg from Seattle to Sea-Tac International Airport opens in December. Phillips said the transit stations will attract businesses that will build and open nearby.
"It's a double bang for the buck," he said. "We're starting to see that at Martin Luther King Way. There are lots of private investments around the stations: mixed-use developments, restaurants, grocery stores and opportunities for people to live in units around the stations. All the conveniences are close by."
Phillips has also championed the controversial $1.8 billion Brightwater water-treatment facility that, in spite of recent delays, will go online September 2011. NIMBYism was at the heart of the controversy of Brightwater. Few communities in the county suggested wanted it nor the negative image that came with it. But Phillips said its new membrane technology is quite self-contained and cleans the water seven times better than the Westpoint facility in Magnolia. He also wanted to dispel the rumor that there were serious cost overruns on the project.
"The original estimate [$1 billion] was an estimate, not a budget," he said. For short-listed coastal sites such as Woodway or Edmonds, fewer dollars would have been spent on conveyance material. But now that the 25-member siting committee chose Woodinville, more pipes means more money.
"It's an essential facility for our economy," he said. "The Department of Ecology will shut down your economy if you don't have places for new houses and condominiums to hook up. We had to build to provide capacity for 30 years or more."
Resuscitating the economy will be Phillips' No. 1 job if elected, he said. Investing in regional infrastructure, he said, is the way to do it: "That's what I'm offering people in a Phillips administration."
