In Our View: Councilors’ Logic Faulty

Based on the faulty logic of Clark County Councilors David Madore and Tom Mielke, Oregon residents who stop for dinner in Vancouver should be able to cast ballots on this side of the river. Clark County residents who buy a cup of coffee in Chehalis should be added to voter rolls in that city. And citizens who pay federal taxes in Peculiar, Mo., should feel right at home voting in Clark County elections.

Madore and Mielke are leading a charge to expand the service and taxing boundaries of C-Tran, the region’s public-transit system. By a 2-1 vote — Councilor Jeanne Stewart stood in opposition — they have taken a long-standing battle against C-Tran to new heights by approving a public transportation conference that will consider extending transit service throughout the county. In 2005, following the failure of a sales-tax measure the previous year, C-Tran reduced its boundaries to the current parameters — Vancouver and its urban growth boundary, plus the incorporated cities of Camas, Washougal, Battle Ground, Ridgefield, La Center, and the town of Yacolt.

That area includes about 80 percent of Clark County’s population, but that is not enough for Madore and Mielke. The problem, in their minds, is that residents in rural Clark County sometimes travel inside the C-Tran service area for purchases, which means they pay sales tax that goes to support public transit. “It’s like taxation without representation,” Mielke said in a miscalculation of the situation.

Which brings us back to the fault in the logic. The truth is that rural Clark County residents who make purchases within the C-Tran boundary do so out of choice, not compulsion. Should Skamania County residents who come to Vancouver for goods and services complain that they have no say in Clark County tax rates? Should residents from other states have representation on the C-Tran board because the agency receives federal funding? Of course not. Which suggests that there is a deeper motivation to the proposal.

Madore has engaged in a long-running series of spats over how C-Tran is governed, even though he sits on the organization’s board. In 2014, he sent an email to the Washington State Auditor’s Office accusing the agency of misconduct and undue secrecy. He made an appearance before the Battle Ground City Council urging representatives to withhold support for C-Tran’s Bus Rapid Transit system. He threatened a lawsuit against the agency over changes in the makeup of the C-Tran board, a suit that eventually was filed by a separate citizens group and was thrown out of court. And he was party to a childish display in which all three county councilors attempted to partake in a C-Tran board meeting after the county’s representation was reduced to two members.

Now he has accused C-Tran of gerrymandering its boundaries in order to assure support from voters, apparently not recognizing that the people who voted in favor of transit service are now receiving that service, and those who don’t wish to pay sales tax in support of the agency are not obligated to do so.

“This is a real need,” Madore said of expanding C-Tran’s service. “There are real citizens out there who are not being served.” That argument would carry more weight if there were a groundswell of rural citizens clamoring for bus service. But that has not been the case. As councilor Stewart said in opposing the call for a transportation conference: “I’m wondering why we’re doing it. I wonder what we’re hoping to affect.”

Good questions. And any logical analysis fails to provide adequate answers.