Conventional wisdom this election is that Paul Schell's political base, the Port of Seattle, is an unrelieved trough of corporate feeding on government largesse. But which corporations? And how much swill? Don't depend on our local dailies, virtual sponsors of the Schell mayoral campaign, to spell it out.

An intriguing hint, however, appeared in a photo caption in the business section of the 10-15-97 P-I:

A truck uses a new 2,000-foot overpass ramp that opened yesterday between the Port of Seattle's Terminal 5 in West Seattle and the low-level West Seattle Bridge. The $10 million ramp is part of a $270 million project to expand the terminal for American President Lines. Port Commission President Paige Miller said the ramp will ease congestion...

Um, wait a minute. $270 million dollars??!!? Spent by a public agency to benefit one corporation?!!?! On a project few have heard of, that was never meaningfully debated in public? That's the cost of, well, a sports stadium!

Sure enough. Turns out the scheme is based on concessions the Port gave several years ago when APL threatened to leave unless it got the taxpayer gravy. Sounds a lot like the stadia--except there was no publicity, no public debate, no outrage. Just welfare for the rich.

There's more. Terminal 5 isn't even the largest such project on the docks. That would be Terminal 18, where a $300 million terminal expansion was quietly approved last December. That money upgrades the facilities of the Stevedoring Services of America. To avoid both public scrutiny and the Port's own rapidly dwindling capacity to issue still more bonds, Schell & Co. created a separate subagency--an "industrial development corporation"-- with its own power to issue bonds, leasing the land from the Port and subleasing it to SSA. This "off-books financing" allowed $120 million in bonds to be issued, absolving the Port and SSA of both financial and legal liability--including Superfund toxic cleanup issues at the Harbor Island site, which, according to a 12-19-96 P-I article on the subject, would be fixed by "simply paving over the land."

These, no doubt, are the "managerial skills" Paul Schell will bring to City Hall. The public needs to pay much, much closer attention to what goes down at the Port of Seattle, big business's premier local taxpayer-funded gravy train. And if his record as mega-developer and Port Commissioner is any clue, the corporate largesse and class war tendencies of a Schell Administration could make Bill Clinton look like a paragon of social policy virtue.

--Geov Parrish