Last week, we brought City Council Position 8 candidates Mike O'Brien, former head of the local chapter of the Sierra Club and chief financial officer at the Stokes Lawrence law firm, and three-time candidate, landlord, and real-estate investor Robert Rosencrantz in for an interview. What follows is an edited transcript of that conversation.

PubliCola: Robert, you’re widely regarded as one of the most conservative candidates in this year's city council races. We can get into the specifics in a minute, but can you give some examples of progressive positions you’ve taken in the past?

Robert Rosencrantz: Well, let's start with creating 1,000 units of low-income housing over the last ten years [as a developer and a manager at the King County Housing Authority] . ...  We created the Capitol Hill Youth Soccer Association, where if you need equipment, all you have to do is knock on the door and ask. I’ve done tutoring and mentoring in the Seattle Public Schools.

PubliCola: But anything that would speak specifically to Seattle's progressive agenda?

Rosencrantz: If by "progressive" you mean coming up with public policies that move the city forward, then yes.

PubliCola: Mike, most of the other council candidates we've talked to say that even if you and Mike McGinn [both opponents of the proposed downtown waterfront tunnel] get elected, the tunnel is a done deal and they’ll fight any efforts to revisit it. Why do you think it isn’t, and how can you convince us you won’t be an  obstructionist on the council, especially if Joe Mallahan [who supports the tunnel] wins?

O'Brien: Well, I think the tunnel is a bad idea. I think—I know, in fact—it’s not a done deal. It hasn’t been engineered and funded. Whether there are the votes [on the council] to push it through, I don’t know … I don’t think I have the power to stop a tunnel. I’m flattered by people that oppose me because they love the tunnel so much. If we have to make trade-offs with human services to support a tunnel I would fight back. Is that being an obstructionist? If so, then I’m an obstructionist.

I use the tunnel as an example of a bad decision and I expect that we will revisit it. I think there’s a good chance it’ll fall apart. But [if it doesn't], ut I am not going to spend four years on undermining the tunnel.

PubliCola: Robert, you supported retrofitting the viaduct. Where are you on the tunnel now?

Rosencrantz: The tunnel is part of our statewide transportation infrastructure. We have to have the capacity to move people, goods and ideas around. My position was, let’s fix what’s there [the existing viaduct]… but the decision was made in the legislature …

A huge majority of people in the legislature thought it was necessary for making sure the Northwest is economically competitive and that we have the kind of job-growing base we need to be competitive.

PubliCola: But how do you justify your position that downtown Seattle property owners should pay for any cost overruns on the tunnel?

Rosencrantz: Look, I think that [a state law requiring Seattle property owners to pay for any cost overruns on the viaduct replacement] is a bad idea, and if elected I will start, on November 4, spending as much time as I can down in Olympia trying to convince them to change that law. But right now, it’s in there and we have to deal with it. We have to make sure we direct those risks. Those who benefit need to be the ones who pay.

PubliCola: But under any scheme that would require property owners to pay, those same property owners would have to agree to be taxed. Why would they agree to tax themselves?

Rosencrantz: Not necessarily, because they’re prudent people and they’ll say,"'let’s see we either have permanent gridlock or let's have a tunnel that moves people and goods." And if they say no, then it would have to go to a vote of the people.

O'Brien (to Rosencrantz): You seem to accept that just because the state has decided, that makes it so. But when the state decided that we had to pass [roads along with transit in 2007, a vote that failed], the state was wrong, and we passed light rail the next year. My position is that just because Olympia says it's so, that doesn't make it so.

PubliCola: At the CityClub debate the other night, both of you held up your "waffle" signs when asked if you support Mayor Greg Nickels' $300 million Mercer project. Can you both explain your positions?

Rosencrantz: It's got to be stripped down to its transportation essentials. There are so many neighborhoods [including Maple Leaf, Lake City, and others ] that have huge drainage issues that are not being addressed [because of the emphasis on Mercer]. That emphasis has to shift.

O'Brien: My issue with  Mercer is that Mercer’s going to be very different if there’s a massive freeway tunnel entrance [i.e., the deep-bore tunnel viaduct replacement]  in South Lake Union. So that’s the difference. I think Mercer is a good project from a Lake Union perspective as well as a transportation perspective.

PubliCola: Mike, Robert has repeatedly said that you want to toll all city streets. How do you respond to that allegation, and what  is your tolling plan?

O'Brien: To be clear, I don’t have a proposal. What I’m open to is looking at if we can use tolling to reduce some of the other taxes that pay for transportation and have nothing to do with transportation. Right now, we have sales tax, property tax and car tab taxes [divided up between] the city, the state and Sound Transit .

I would like to shift our transportation funding toward user fees.

Beyond that, I would look to the experts to tell us what plan works. Tolling I-5 would make sense. Then does that simply dump a bunch of traffic on neighborhood streets?

PubliCola: Robert, do you support any tolling plan?

Rosencrantz: I support as little tolling as possible. If it’s necessary to pay for direct construction of something, I could accept it. But I don’t agree with this idea that we should price people out of their cars.

I would prefer to toll neither (SR-520 nor I-90). If [tolling is] necessary to pay for construction of 520, I would be open to it. I'm not a “let’s put a user fee on it to force people out of their cars" person. We already pay for our roads through the gas tax.

PubliCola: Robert, do you support light rail? It seems, from what you're saying about tolls, that you're not a fan of congestion relief that doesn't consist of new highway construction.

Rosencrantz: We’re building light rail. But a proposal to build light rail from West Seattle to Ballard as a counterbalance for all the cars that are going to be dumped on the streets by simply getting rid of the viaduct. ...

This [tolling proposal] is coming from the guy who wants to keep the head tax.

O'Brien: I hear  you saying that a revenue-neutral tolling system is going to drive people out of the city, and the head tax is going to drive people out, and yet you support a $930 million [city] tax for the tunnel?

PubliCola: Robert, you've said that you think we should take away panhandlers' source of income so they'll dedicate themselves to more productive pursuits. What did you mean by that?

Rosencrantz: Let's look at what i actually said What I said was that if they have that much energy, they should find something more productive to do.

Let's give people housing, mental health services, whatever it takes to improve their lives. We should get aggressive with matching them up with a mentor or another homeless person. Let them learn the trades.

My thinking is there is good in everybody, there is better in everybody, and it is incumbent on us as individuals to bring that out in people

PubliCola: Mike, do you support City Council member Tim Burgess' proposed restrictions on panhandlers?

O'Brien: I think the police have rules in place to address panhandling as it is.

If the alternative is to simpy arrest those people and we take that person and put them in a jail cat a big cost to [society], I don't think that's a good option. The police can come and tell nayone to move along already. ...

I don’t like being panhandled either. But we need to know who these people are, why they’re doing this. If someone’s making a good career out of this, that’s not acceptable. But every law we write is gping to have some broad strokes and we need to be attentive to that.

PubliCola: Robert, you've raised a lot of concerns among pro-choice groups about your position on a woman's right to choose abortion. Leaving aside the law, what are your personal beliefs about abortion?

Rosencrantz: The state law is clear and it's... there for a reason.

O'Brien [interrupting]: Do you believe there should be [a requirement that parents] consent for a minor [to get an abortion]?

Rosencrantz: No, and here’s why. The laws are designed to proctect those who constitute a small minority and young women who feel they don’t have another option are a small minority.

I fully support public health clinic funding for the full range of services, but I do believe nurses and doctors should have a conscience exemption. I agree with President Obama on that.

O'Brien [interrupting]: I think there's a difference. There are laws and there are things you believe. There are things I will fight passionately for and there are things I will fight less passionately for. Would you fight for [health care providers] to be doing what you don’t believe you should be doing?

Rosencrantz: Would I fight passionately for that [public health clinic] funding? Yes.