BELLEVUE — State Sen. Ed Murray told a group of WSU alumni Monday they should be ashamed of their roles in a campaign aimed at thwarting the UW’s appeal for King County tax dollars to be used for the renovation of Husky Stadium.

“You’re setting up a bomb that’s about to explode,” Murray said, responding to a testimony from Mike Bernard and Glenn Osterhout, two of the campaign’s founders, at public meeting at Bellevue City Hall.

In addition to starting an e-mail list that reaches about 200 people, Bernard and Osterhout started a Facebook group called “WAZZU fans against UW’s proposed money grab,” which has attracted more than 2,000 members.

Sen. Murray said the group was “monkeying with facts” and that it was launching a “provincial war.”

But Bernard, speaking in front of a seven-member joint task force commissioned to give lawmakers a recommendation on the issue, maintained that his group’s mission has nothing to do with the rivalry between the two universities, but rather a concern over whether the $150 million the UW wants in public funding is a good use of taxpayer money.

“It’s both an issue of appropriate use of tax dollars and whether or not the tax should be allowed to expire because its original purpose is going away,” Bernard said. “The second issue is fairness. Why should the state of Washington give an advantage to one Pac-10 institution and not the other? You’ve got plenty of resources to do that without using state money.”

UW Athletic Director Scott Woodward, who spoke on behalf of the school, said he’d be shocked if WSU Athletic Director Jim Sterk disagreed with the UW’s proposal.

Ron Crockett, president of Emerald Downs and a major UW booster, also testified and said he’d heard WSU’s regents were also not against the public funding for the project, aimed in part to make the crumbling lower bowl safer for fans.

Committee co-chair, state Sen. Tracey Eide, a UW football season ticket holder, said she was amazed at the big crack that stretches across the lower bowl.

Murray, citing the state’s diminishing investment in the UW since the 1970s, said lawmakers have failed to invest in major infrastructure, including the stadium. He said he supports the proposal, and that the responsibility of the project should fall on the state, since the UW is one of the state’s “two jewels” for public education.

The UW wants to raise half of its proposed $300 million renovation privately. The school wants access to revenue from taxes already levied on King County hotels, motels, car rentals and restaurants to pay for the other half, which would cover safety and ADA issues. The taxes are currently used to pay off the Kingdome, Qwest Field and Safeco Field.

Bernard said the taxes should expire once they serve their purpose, and that he is not against the UW renovating Husky Stadium, as long as it’s not publically funded.

When asked why the school hasn’t requested specific stadium-related donations, John Buller, the former head of UW Alumni relations and operator of tellthehusky.com, a Web site dedicated to making the stadium funding plan clearer, said it’s hard to get people passionate about donating for elevators, stair width and rails.

Osterhout, citing WSU’s four-phase, privately funded renovation plan for Martin Stadium, said the UW should be more creative to raise money.

He said the UW has the means to fund the renovation alone, referring to the $2.7 billion the school has raised since 2000, even though nearly all of the money came from donors for specific uses, none of which included Husky Stadium.

Reach reporter Maks Goldenshteyn at sports@dailyuw.com.