Five members of the Seattle City Council seeking reelection want their names to appear on the August primary ballot, but they and three other members of the council, according to sources, don't want the ballot to give voters a choice on a project they support. Yes, the tunnel. Reportedly driven by Council President Richard Conlin, the council is currently considering the legal options for blocking an August referendum on the $4.2 billion project (including $930 million from Seattle).

At issue: a tunnel ordinance passed by the council on February 28 that authorized three agreements with the state pertaining to right-of-way and utility relocation. Start-up campaign Protect Seattle Now had 30 days—which is up today—to gather 16,500 signatures from city voters to qualify that ordinance on the ballot. The group has more than enough signatures to submit this afternoon.

But about a week or two ago, according to several sources at City Hall, Conlin began shopping around a document that outlined three or four scenarios that would prevent a vote. Not surprisingly, Conlin's office refuses to provide a copy of that document (Conlin also reportedly told his colleagues this morning not to speak with the media about this). And Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes says his office edited the document, but he was working for the council and could not share any information about it.

But sources say that the council is asking Holmes to seek a declaratory judgment—asking a judge to determine if a vote is allowed at all.

The dispute, as I've written about before, is whether this ordinance is exempt from the referendum process (the council contends this is an "administrative act," not subject to a public vote, because the ordinance follows through on non-binding resolutions the council approved in 2009 and 2010). That may or may not hold water; the city charter says "any ordinance" is subject to referendum and the past resolutions were, again, nonbinding.

Sources say the council is considering several options: (1) Seek the aforementioned judgment and hope the referendum is nullified; (2) refuse to refer the referendum to the ballot, requiring Protect Seattle Now to sue the city; this scenario is politically undesirable for the council, which could be portrayed as opponents of direct democracy, and for Holmes, who would defend the city in court and bear the same political tarnish; (3) place the referendum on the ballot, thereby letting tunnel proponents sue the city to remove it from the ballot, and require Holmes—who has been working with the council to keep it off the ballot—perform an about face and argue in court that it should be on the ballot; or (4) wait until after the August vote, and then wait for a lawsuit.