[Editor's note: This article was originally posted this morning. It has been updated to include comments from Metro general manager Kevin Desmond.]

[caption id="attachment_15963" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Hutchison at the Washington Policy Center dinner"] [/caption]

Last night's environmental debate at the Seattle Aquarium was an opportunity for King County Exec candidate Susan Hutchison to prove that her views on climate change, transportation, and Puget Sound cleanup weren't as far out of line with King County's progressive views as her opponent Dow Constantine has suggested.

Instead, she fumbled answers to basic questions, stumbled awkwardly through an introductory statement about her parents' commitment to the environment, made numerous tin-eared remarks about "out-of-control government" and her "multi-car family" and made a number of assertions that simply weren't true.

For example:

• Hutchison claimed that the so-called "40-40-20" Metro agreement, has failed to provide service "where the demand is greatest.... to those who live in affordable housing on the outskirts of the county and need to get to their jobs."

In reality, 40-40-20 disproportionately serves outlying areas, because it provides 80 percent of new bus service to the suburbs, not Seattle. Meanwhile the most efficient use of bus hours is actually in Seattle, not in outlying areas.

Hutchison also chalked Metro's $213 million projected 2010-2011 budget deficit up to freeloaders who refuse to pay to ride the bus, and argued that a special panel made up of bus drivers could come up with a better plan for making sure people pay their fares, because "they're the ones who know about the people who get on the bus and don't pay.

"We are short millions and millions of dollars because we do not have a good fare enforcement process," she said.

In reality, according to Metro general manager Kevin Desmond, fare evasion amounts to only around three percent of Metro fares. With fare revenues in the range of $90 million, that's right around  $2.7 million, or less than one percent of Metro's two-year budget shortfall.

"The notion that if we just collected fares on everyone we would collect a lot of money is a false notion," Desmond says. "A number of those folks, if there was an effective way to force them to pay the fare, wouldn’t use the system." Meanwhile, "a zero-tolerance approach would require significant enforcement ... which costs money."

• In response to a question from Constantine about how she could claim to be an "environmentalist" after giving $1,000 to the anti-environment Building Industry Association of Washington (BIAW) and hiring a campaign manager who had worked for the BIAW, Hutchison claimed that she had "never given any money to the BIAW and my campaign manager has never worked for the BIAW, so I don't know what you're talking about."

In fact, Hutchison gave $1,000 to the BIAW's PAC, ChangePAC, in 2005. In both 2004 and 2008, ChangePAC funded a massive radio and TV campaign against Gov. Christine Gregoire, who was opposed by Republican Dino Rossi. Additionally, as PubliCola has reported, ChangePAC was among the clients of the consulting firm that employs Hutchison's campaign manager, Jordan McCarren.

• In the second part of his question, Constantine asked Hutchison about her support for the Washington Policy Center, a right-wing think tank. (Hutchison attended the WPC's annual fundraising dinner in 2008 and steered $100,000 to the group's Center for the Environment, which fights environmental regulations and questions global warming). In response, Hutchison called the WPC a "highly respected think tank serving both Republicans and Democrats and wondered aloud "what my opponent is trying to do by besmirching organizations like the WPC who have done such good work enlightening people in the legislature."

As the Seattle Transit Blog reports today, the WPC isn't exactly moderate in its views on the environment or transportation. For example, in a report that Hutchison praised during last year's fundraising dinner (calling it "one of the most extraordinary pieces of work about Washington State and the policies that make our government run"), the group argued against restrictions on driving, against "costly, inefficient" light rail, and in favor of increasing spending on general-purpose highway lanes. The report also argues that spending money on transit "coerces people into abandoning their individual liberties in favor of a socialistic benefit where supposedly a greater collective good is created."

• Hutchison claimed that light rail doesn't go where people live and isn't served by other transit. "I went to the opening of light rail at the Mount Baker station. The day it opened, there were a few boarded-up warehouses and some cracked blacktop and no park-and-ride and no bus service," Hutchison said. "The buses have not been integrated to serve our light-rail terminals."

While it's true that the area around the Mount Baker station includes several big-box stores with huge parking lots, it also includes thousands of units of housing (and the capacity for many thousands more). In fact, with more than 50 units allowed per acre, the Mount Baker station was the case study for a bill that would have increased density around transit stations last year. To suggest that no one lives there shows an almost comical lack of familiarity with the area.

Additionally, the Mount Baker station is served by eight different bus routes, including one, the 48, that was truncated specifically to end at the station. And, as Desmond notes, Metro "built a big, nice transit center right across the street" from the Mount Baker station to serve light rail.