John Ley, Washington State Representative for District 18, Position 2, recently appeared on The Lars Larson Show to discuss his fight against the Interstate Bridge Replacement funding proposal. Ley shared details about his 20-page letter submitted to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, outlining issues of fraud, waste, and abuse in the project. He criticized its failure to add vehicle capacity to I-5 and highlighted its exorbitant costs, including the $1.9 billion MAX light rail extension. Ley hopes for a pause in federal funding and encourages commonsense solutions to address traffic congestion without burdening taxpayers.
Transcript
Lars Larson
Welcome back to the Lars Larson Show. It’s a pleasure to be with you on a Wednesday. Now, not so pleasurable is thinking about this in the next two months, because two months from today is the day that Donald Trump takes the oath of office. Joe Biden goes out the door. And thank goodness it couldn’t happen soon enough. But before he does that, he and his administration may just try to do a certain amount of damage everywhere in Ukraine, in Washington, D.C., and maybe even here in the Pacific Northwest, which is why people like John Ley, who’s now a newly elected member of the Washington House of Representatives, and that’s district 18 position 2. But he has been dodging this issue of the interstate bridge replacement, the second boondoggle bridge, because the first one failed after a couple of hundred million dollars have been wasted, thrown down a rat hole. And none of that money recovered at all. And now they’re trying again to get this thing done. And, John, do you share my welcome to the show? But do you share my concern that maybe in the waning days of the Biden administration, somebody like Secretary Pete Buttigieg, head of transportation, might just try to approve things for this project that should not be approved.
John Ley
Hey, Lars, great to be on. And you’re exactly right. And so that is why we try to shine the light of day on so many facets of this entire boondoggle. A year and a half ago, I began putting together a letter to DOT Secretary Buttigieg. I wanted to speak truth to power. He can’t fix a problem that he doesn’t know the depth of the fraud, waste, and abuse happening within the Interstate Bridge project.
Yeah, you and I know he probably doesn’t really want to root out anything bad, but I wanted to put it on his plate nonetheless. In the end, I had a 20-page letter, complete with footnotes that I submitted as official public comment to the IBR’s Environmental Impact Statement, and it’s going to force them to respond. But on top of that, I submitted it to the DOT Secretary, which sets the stage for the Trump administration to dig into all the issues you and I have discussed over the last couple of years that highlight the program, the fact that it’s a bridge too low, it doesn’t add new vehicle capacity to I-5, the 1.9-mile MAX light rail extension that will be the most expensive rail project in the world. And the fact that TriMet is trying to fleece the taxpayers of both states, but especially Washington. So of course, my hope is that the Trump administration comes in and goes full stop on this entire boondoggle because the reality is, there is no value in this entire boondoggle for the average citizens of both Oregon and Washington.
Lars Larson
Okay. So let me ask you this, John. This gets a little bit into Capitol Hill politics. That’s not exactly my strong suit, but is there any way that the current DOT, in the next 60 days, could obligate a future Congress to say the Congress next year will approve this funding, or we’re approving funding in advance? That will be locked in in such a way that it can’t be unlocked and undone once the Trump administration comes in, because that’s what I worry about.
Now usually, the Congress and the legislatures are not allowed to obligate a future Congress or a future legislature and say, we promise we’ll pay this money. Even you, as a House of Representatives member in Olympia, can’t say, well, we’re going to fund this this year, and we promise you the funding will go for the next ten years, because you only get to promise for the two years of your term. Right?
John Ley
Yeah, exactly right. And to answer your question, I don’t believe in the next two months there’s anything the Biden administration can do to set the funding in stone, which is wonderful for scrutiny on the project and for the Trump administration to undo what’s been done. At the moment, they’ve only promised, quote unquote, the allocation of 2.1 billion in federal dollars to the project.
But there’s a whole host of things that have to be done according to normal DOT, Federal Highway Administration rules, etc., that have not been completed. And I just don’t see any way they could get them completed. Number one, before the end of the Biden administration. And number two, clearly when you’re talking fraud, waste, and abuse of federal money, any administration can come in and hit the brakes and say, wait a minute, we’re stopping.
We’re not writing the checks. And until the checks are written to the program, we’re going to be able to stop this. And so that’s why I delight in the Trump administration. And as you and I talked about so many times, the DOGE Committee, oh my gosh, having Vivek and Elon come in and say, let’s look for some waste.
Well, some of the programs they’re talking about are just millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions. In this case, we’re talking potentially eight, nine, ten, $12 billion. And so it ought to be a very nice cherry on the top for them to say, well, we can stop wasting billions of federal dollars if we scrutinize this. Please, gentlemen, let me invite you into my community and highlight one of the most ridiculous, expensive waste of public money in the history of the Pacific Northwest.
Lars Larson
Well, and by the way, John, am I right in suspecting that since this project could cost on the order of $10 billion and they have 2 billion committed by the feds, so that maybe as little as 20% of the entire project. And since both Oregon and Washington are shy of any money, I mean, I think ODOT has committed a billion, but they don’t know where they’re going to get it from.
So they’ve made a commitment without any way to say, and we know where we’ll get that money. They’ve just said we’ve made the commitment. So given that, if you were able to attract the attention of Musk and Ramaswamy and say, look, here’s a way you’re going to end up paying probably 50% of this project. That’s $5 billion.
It changes nothing on congestion. It wastes money on expensive light rail without any kind of ridership assurances at all. How about wiping out 5 billion and we can go ahead and build a brand-new bridge and do it for a whole lot less money? Wipe the light rail out, make the bridge bigger. Make it big enough to last the next 100 years.
The way the current bridge has had to last 100 years, I would think you could get their attention with that kind of thing.
John Ley
Oh, nothing would warm the cockles of my heart more, my friend, than to have Elon and Vivek come out here. Let Lars and John give them a tour of the project area and show them the nightmare of roughly 12 hours a day of traffic congestion on that whole corridor and say, gentlemen, there’s a logical, commonsense way to fix this.
And by the way, Mr. Elon, maybe one of your tunnel boring machines could put a tunnel underneath the river a heck of a lot cheaper than 10 billion bucks and help reduce traffic congestion.
Lars Larson
You know what I’d love to see you do, John. I mean, sometimes stunts get people’s attention. Can you imagine if you went and bought a few weather balloons, Edmond Scientific or one of those places, filled them up with helium, and then put them up at the level where the downtown Vancouver light rail station is going to be 80ft off the ground?
And when you call the TV station, say, hey, here’s a visual for you. Come on and take a look at this. This is where the light rail station is going to sit, right where those red balloons are. And then ask your viewers whether or not they think a light rail station 80ft in the air, or the one that’s 55ft in the air over Hayden Island makes any sense at all, especially since we know they’re not likely to have the kind of elevators to put people up to that thing ever.
That’s John Ley, new member of the House of Representatives in Washington, District 18, position 2. Coming up…
