BART to Warm Springs...a slight delay?

Here are two BART stories that Watch Dog will connect for loyal readers:

• Last Friday, the Valley Transportation Authority had a workshop to talk about how crappy sales tax revenue has been lately. Those sales tax revenues mean that the timeline for BART may be very, very, very long...so long that Supervisor/President Liz Kniss and other Board members were shocked.
  

• Today, we learn that two former BART officials, along with the lawsuit-happy Transportation Solutions and Education Fund, are suing the Metropolitan Transportation Commission for allocating funds for the Fremont Warm Springs BART extension. The Transportation Solutions and Education Fund say that the Warm Springs extension is only supposed to happen when the funds for the full BART extension to Santa Clara County come available...and with the sales tax revenue tanking...well, you can figure out the rest...

The Transportation Solutions and Education Fund folks are the same San Rafael-based dudes that sued to stop Santa Clara County's Measure B votes from being counted in November...which eventually passed. Apparently that loss pissed off the Transportation Solutions and Education Fund folks pretty badly...

So badly, in fact, that the Transportation Solutions and Education Fund needed to make themselves relevant again following their bad loss on Measure B. And nothing beats suing a government agency to produce headlines...

This BART does not speak for the real BART, but we can assume that the real BART might say something similar:

Measure B (BART to Silicon Valley) drama coming to an end? The legal eagle update...

Election drama and nail biting appeared to be over when Measure B passed mid-November.

(Measure B was a tax measure to continue funding the BART extension to downtown San Jose.)

Not so fast, cried Measure B opponents last week as they filed a last minute lawsuit to delay certification and force a recount. As Watch Dog readers know, only yesterday a judge in San Jose sent them packing when it turned out the lawsuit was filed in the wrong county.

Fast-forward to today.

In a gloomy San Francisco morning in San Francisco Superior Court where arguments were heard by Judge Peter Busch for a temporary restraining order to prevent certification of election results.

Slight problem - the Registrar is good at PR and law. The Registrar this morning dropped the certified results in the mail this morning before going to court.

(No surprise) Judge Busch denied the restraining order as results had already been certified.

Is this the end of the drama? Only time will tell.

David Schonbrunn of TransDef.org, the chief opponents of Measure B, says "No one knows how the voters of Santa Clara County really voted on this." Well, the Judge, the Registrar, Carl Guardino, and more than 2/3 of the voters know how the County voted on this...the only people that don't seem to get it are the TransDef.org folks...

The Registrar graciuosly pointed out TransDef could request a recount -- at TransDef.org's cost -- for an estimated $400,000. Does T.J. Rogers have that kind of money to put behind a recount?

Stay tuned as the drama continues to unfold.