Sound Transit CEO Dow Constantine will ring in the new year a bit wealthier, but chose to postpone most of his 2026 pay raises until light rail trains finally carry passengers across Lake Washington.
When the agency's three-county, 18-member governing Board picked him last spring, his $450,000 starting pay on April 1, 2025, scraped the bottom of Sound Transit's nationally advertised salary range. The contract provided chances to earn more.
Constantine's base pay will rise to $474,276 immediately, or about 5.3%, resulting from a comparison of chief executive salaries in Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco-based Bay Area Rapid Transit, each converted to Seattle living costs.
But at his request, the Board will delay giving him a $30,000 performance award, according to a motion passed in December.
He also received a grade of outstanding" from the Board, which should be worth up to 6% or $28,457 when distributed later in 2026, as an annual raise that includes an inflation factor.
When the dust settles, in a few months, his compensation will total $532,733, assuming it's retroactive to Jan. 1, 2026. The Board will vote later this year to pay the performance award and yearly raise, in other words, a deferred 71% of his prospective $82,733 total raises.
The contract also provides a 12% retirement fund contribution in lieu of Social Security; additional retirement money (estimated at $34,750 last year); and 35 vacation days per year convertible to cash. Sound Transit's retirement program is independent from the pensions he earned as a longtime King County executive, council member and state legislator.
A lucrative series of raises would project a sour image to Sound Transit's taxpayers, when the voter-approved segment of East Link on I-90, the world's first passenger rail on a floating bridge, remains unfinished and six years late. Its grand opening is now projected to happen before May 31.
Constantine explained his rationale at a committee session Dec. 11:
"I asked that we defer the compensation question because I am very focused on the major goals that I've handed to our staff, and I want them to hear this, to open East Link, to increase reliability, safety, security and cleanliness, and to balance our long-term financial plan. That's what we're after, that's what everybody has to rally around, and that's what I want to be judged by."
Last summer, Constantine announced deepening inflation and necessary equipment upgrades totaling $35 billion, pushing the full cost to build and operate buses, commuter rail and light rail, including future trains to Ballard, West Seattle, Everett, Tacoma, Issaquah and South Kirkland, to $185 billion from 2017-46. There's not yet a clear funding solution or model, a task the Board doesn't expect to finish until the second half of 2026.
Notwithstanding construction inflation and the runaway costs of such an ambitious program — which snowballed over many years while Constantine was a Board chair or member — current Chair Dave Somers, who is the Snohomish County executive, and colleagues praised Constantine's effort to communicate and troubleshoot problems during 2025.
Meanwhile, the agency opened new Redmond and Federal Way extensions, improved the once-laughable escalators up to 95%-plus reliability and embarked on stronger rail and power-supply maintenance this fall, in hopes of reducing service breakdowns and improving light rail's mediocre 80% on-time performance.
"Our new CEO understands the assignment and has done a great job in a very short amount of time," said Board member Kristina Walker, a Tacoma City Council member.
The Board unanimously hired Constantine last spring over four other finalists who led out-of-state transit agencies. A few pro-transit activists, and untold citizens in online and real chats, complained about the Board choosing an insider who had appointed several of them to Sound Transit seats. But he prevailed based on his sophisticated local knowledge and commitment to building the Puget Sound rail network.
"As someone who expressed some skepticism at the beginning of this, I want to own that and say how impressed I've been in working with CEO Constantine and the way he's tenaciously attacking the capital finance challenges and the operations resiliency challenges, said Board member Hunter George, a council member from Fircrest, Pierce County.
Sound Transit CEOs have delayed raises before.
Joni Earl skipped her raises in early 2010, in the fallout from the Great Recession, despite opening Seattle's first light rail segments to Tukwila and SeaTac the year before. That kept her salary at $195,467, to be boosted later.
Peter Rogoff skipped raises worth $21,184 in 2021, staying at $379,600 that year, following news of a massive long-term budget shortfall to build future lines to Ballard, Tacoma, West Seattle, Issaquah and Everett.
Five years later, a mostly elevated line to Everett looks affordable by the early 2040s, but a West Seattle train bridge and a second downtown Seattle tunnel still seem like budget breakers, despite some leaner station shapes and better contracting methods devised by Constantine's senior engineering team. Tough choices or even project cuts await the CEO after crossing the lake.
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