The King County Council subsequently adopted these policies and, during the fall 1999 budget review, amended the fare ordinance to implement this policy. In setting transit fares, our elected officials must strike a balance between competing objectives such as promoting ridership, recovering sufficient revenue, reflecting cost of service, treating riders equitably, complying with federal requirements for fare discounts for seniors and people with disabilities and, of course, simplifying fares. Although eliminating the zone surcharge during the peak period would further simplify fares for riders and operators, this would have a major impact on other important objectives. First, a single peak fare would not reflect the greater cost of providing two-zone peak trips. These advertisements should not have been included with county paychecks.
Current policy prohibits commercial items such as advertising materials.
When I looked into this incident, I found out that someone dropped off two boxes of these advertisements at the payroll distribution office without going through channels. Also, since the Sonics advertisements weren't bundled and labeled, it's likely that some staff picked up the fliers for their work groups and others didn't. We are reworking our policy on distributing materials with county paychecks to make sure this doesn't happen in the future. The revised policy will clarify the criteria for approving items for distribution to employees. It will also have a protocol about how to prepare, bundle and label materials.