Puget Sound Partnership reaches a crossroads
Can the state cleanup effort deliver on Gov. Gregoire's demands for measures of real progress? Or, more basically, can the Partnership convince the public that there is a real need for a cleanup?
Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT)
"What a perfect time to take stock" of what Puget Sound needs and how we can provide it, says Kathy Fletcher, founder and executive director of People for Puget Sound who, will retire next year from the advocacy group. Fletcher, who has headed that group since 1990 and has been been the most recognizable advocate of reviving Puget Sound since the mid-1980s, looks at the economic slowdown, the almost dead halt to development, the changing of the guard at the state-established Puget Sound Partnership, and sees opporunity — if we have the will to sieze it.
We certainly seem to have reached a crossroads. Fletcher herself, who chaired the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority in the 1980s and has been the only executive director of the group she founded, is leaving after 20 years. And Fletcher isn't the only person making a change. David Dicks, the first and only executive director of the Puget Sound Partnership, has left the organizatioin for a job at the University of Washington. Gov. Chris Gregoire, who launched the current save-the-Sound crusade and is entering what may be her last two years in office, has just announced a major reorganization of natural resource agencies that will leave the Partnership intact as the only agency responsible for Puget Sound.
Created in 2007 to replace the old interim group of the same name, which replaced the Puget Sound Action Team (which replaced the Puget Sound Water Quality Authority), the Partnership was stung last spring by a series of revelations about minor financial sins, and suggestions of both cronyism and misuse of power. The Washington State Auditor's Office found that the "Puget Sound Partnership circumvented state contracting laws, exceeded its purchasing authority and made unallowable purchases with public funds.” The agency had, circumvented competitive bidding requirements — and a requirement to use the Attorney General's office — to hire an outside law firm, and had bought Apple computer products at retail even though they cost two-thirds more than low-end PCs and weren't compatible with state information systems. In August, a series of KUOW radio reports by John Ryan repeated the Auditor's findings, also reporting that Dicks had misused a government car and that the Partnership had fired a whistleblower.
Most of the alleged sins seemed distinctly minor, but credibility had become an issue. Referring to the KUOW reports, the Tacoma News Tribune suggested that “Puget Sound is in serious need ... of a cleanup agency that the public trusts." "On that score," the paper said, "the Puget Sound Partnership is failing. Its management practices invite skepticism and undermine its own mission to secure money for the Sound's rescue."
The skepticism evidently extended to Gregoire. At an October hearing on accountability for state resource agencies, Dicks started giving some background about the Partnership when the governor broke in. “These slides are too general for me,” she said. “I knew the story. I want data. I want to be able to see that we are accomplishing what we set out to do. ... I need to be able to show to the legislature, candidly, that we are doing our job.”
The governor sounded like a woman whose patience was being tried. "We have to have measures, goals," she said, "and we don't have that." She explained that in addition to targets and progress reports about the health of Puget Sound, "we have to have (them) for the Puget Sound Partnership itself."
The governor added, "The next time we come here, I've got to be able to ... hold the Puget Sound Partnership accountable. ... Where's the part where the Puget Sound Partnership can say ... 'Here's our job, and here's how we're doing our job?' "
What Gregoire didn't say was that the next time, she expected to be hearing it from someone other than Dicks. Within a month, rumor had it that — at the governor's behind-the-scenes insistence — Dicks was on his way out, and on November 10, the Partnership announced that he would take a position at the new University of Washington College of the Environment. On December 1, deputy director Gerry O'Keefe (who had arrived in March) took over as acting executive director. (There have been rumors about the next permanent executive director, but no hint yet of anything official.)
"In the near term, the Partnership has to become more visible," says Bill Ruckelshaus, former chair and still a member of the Partnership's leadership council. "It has to be known as the place where people go to get the truth about Puget Sound."
Does that mean new leadership that can raise the organization's profile, rather than merely make the trains run on time? “We need to have both,” says Northwest Straits Commission director Ginny Broadhurst, “and it doesn't have to be in one person.” Whoever runs the organization, “they really need to provide the backbone for doing the right thing,” says Fletcher of People for Puget Sound.
The Partnership still must prove that it knows how to look in the mirror. How can it deal with Gregoire's criticism? "You've got to talk with people," says acting Executive Director O'Keefe. "We just need to ask people, 'What are your expectations? What will it look like when we're meeting your expectations?'" O'Keefe says that he is "very confident" of meeting the governor's standards.
Clearly, the Partnership has disappointed a lot of people who had hoped for a higher profile and more visible progress. Whether or not anyone could have moved the state legislature and bureaucracy further in the past three years' economic and political environment is unclear. But obviously, it shouldn't have taken the Partnership three years to come up with a list of 20 “dashboard indicators” by which to gauge progress. But the dashboard indicators were unveiled last summer. Next, “we need to set targets,” O'Keefe says. The organization is still working on numerical targets that give the dashboard indicators some specificity. Using a medical analogy, O'Keefe says the dashboard indicators “are meant to be sort of the equivalents of pulse, blood pressure, temperature. . . . The next step will be to define what 'healthy' looks like.”
O'Keefe explains that although one dashboard indicator is the spawning biomass of Pacific herring, no one knows what that herring biomass would be in a healthy Sound. How many herring should we have? How many herring do we have now?
“We're building something,” O'Keefe says, and suggests that the appropriate questions are pretty well the same ones you'd ask about a construction project; you just have to “ask yourself, are you on track to deliver a completed product on time?”
At this point, no one knows whether we're on track or not. Ruckelshaus says the group has “two almost entirely different needs.” In the long term, he says, the organization “has to put in place a series of systems” to tell us how we're doing. “The indicators are good enough to get us going,” he says, but “we need to monitor those indicators” and “we don't have a monitoring system in place yet.”
Legislators have always been reluctant to spend money on monitoring. There are, of course, plenty of scientists out there generating lots of data all the time. But it's not coordinated to provide the kind of focused information the Partnership needs, Ruckelshaus explains. Partly, he says, that stems from jealousies and conflicts over professional turf. And partly, it stems from piecemeal federal requirements that isolate research projects in separate silos.
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Comments:
Posted Wed, Dec 22, 7:43 a.m. Inappropriate
Close the agency and roll it into DOE. Any agency with an zealot like Martha Kongsgaard is bound to spin out of control. Dicks got paid off because of who his father is with a three day a week job at UW for $75,000 + benefits, not bad in a State University bleeding red-ink.
Posted Wed, Dec 22, 8:19 a.m. Inappropriate
"In the near term, the Partnership has to become more visible," says Bill Ruckelshaus, former chair and still a member of the Partnership's leadership council. "It has to be known as the place where people go to get the truth about Puget Sound."
Won't happen, Bill. The Puget Sound Partnership is nothing but a jobs program and political action committee of the Democratic Party and their "truth" will - always - be that Party's agenda and line.
Does anyone believe David Dicks achieved his PSP position by merit - vs - political alliance? Does anyone believe his appointment to the UW College of the Environment was based on merit - vs - political alliance?
The seeding of social institutions by political operatives should outrage the public and cast doubt on ANYTHING coming out of compromised agencies.
The Puget Sound Partnership was formed out of a critical-mass realization (too obvious to be ignored any longer) that the "cleanup" effort was uncoordinated and inefficient. A whole industry of Democrat Party connected fiefdoms had sprang up to clutch their piece of the recovery pie. Getting on the gravy train: Local governments, community groups and non-profit organizations. All swearing to the Democratic Party agenda. And, in exchange, all receiving grant money for their allegiance and cooperation. The PSP was supposed to rectify this and bring efficiency and effectiveness (and "science"!)to the matter. It didn't. Like-minded bureaucrats are loathe to speak ill of one another (and threaten one another's funding source) so they kept their dirty little secrets to themselves. Consequently, the taxpayers not only still fund the self-serving disjointed fiefdoms (how many "non-profits" were mentioned in this article?) but they are also on the hook for another hungry mouth: the Puget Sound Partnership (not to mention the political appointees at the UW College of the Environment; how much is tuition set to increase?).
The author talks of "monitoring". Has the PSP inventoried and included the vast amounts of monitoring already taking place (at taxpayers expense) in the Puget Sound region? No. Can the PSP tell the citizenry of this region what they are spending - in total - for Puget Sound restoration? No.
And while the public pays for these political machinations and ineptitudes, the Sound (sorry, I'm not playing the PC Salish Sea thing), the Sound continues to deteriorate. Why? Because the PSP puts the Democratic Party agenda before any "science" they profess to practice. The author references - and wrings his hands over - the Puget Sound region's population growth. Researchers at Oregon State University have reported that this population growth - the vast majority of which is from immigration from outside the U.S. and Canada (their words, not mine) - is the NUMBER ONE threat to PNW salmon and their habitats. And what is the PSP's position on this? They are mum. Negligently so. Why? Because the Democratic Party champions illegal immigration and cannot allow news of environmental consequences to impede that plank in their platform. So the PSP stays quiet. Like good Party loyalists. Meanwhile they produce cutesy little PSA's telling people to scoop their dog poop. And - oh by the way - provide "scientific" justification to the Democratic Party's regulatory agenda. Like good Party loyalists.
Sorry, Daniel. It is too late to reform the PSP. It is compromised by politics. The People cannot trust it. It should be abolished.
Posted Wed, Dec 22, 8:54 a.m. Inappropriate
So, they set up a little state agency with minimal staff, minimal budget, no funding stream or regulatory authority, no ability to direct funding, no say over land use, and then have Olympia ignore it for three years to cut budgets.
What did people think would be the outcome?
Saving Puget Sound requires a commitment of political capital and energy from leadership at the top of all levels of government. This is where the blame should be placed for any failure to make progress.
Posted Wed, Dec 22, 9 a.m. Inappropriate
And we should exact that "blame" on those "at the top" by rejecting the political tool - the Puget Sound Partnership - they created to do their bidding.
Posted Wed, Dec 22, 11:40 a.m. Inappropriate
The Editor: The Ad hominem attack on Martha Kongsgaard above, is both inaccurate and inappropriate. It should be taken down.
Ross Kane
Warm Beach
Posted Wed, Dec 22, 1:42 p.m. Inappropriate
MINOR financial sins? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? In federal government someone would be in jail!
Dicks purposely falsified urgency so that he could avoid having the AG's office do the work.
Dicks violated the contract open bidding threshold.
Dicks issued a contract to his father's 4th biggest political donor, and that donor, who is on the PSP Board, also was instrumental in getting him appointed.
Dicks paid his staff 20-40% MORE than similar jobs in state agencies.
Dicks sent $10,000 of taxpayer money to a group who had his brother as a lobbyist, and which the State Audit report said did not provide value to taxpayers.
Dicks fired a whistleblower and then secretly paid her off with taxpayer money.
And after being reprimanded by Gregoire, goes on a vidoetaped interview to say "nothing significant was found".
And of course, UW, which apparently doesn't have any ethics standards in its hiring, hires Dicks at $75,000/year for 3-day work weeks.
You don't think he was protected by cronyism?
Posted Wed, Dec 22, 1:50 p.m. Inappropriate
Martha Kongsgaard and her Environmentalist Activist Lawyer husband make no secret of their zealotry, read her bio at the PSP website and try to take the blinders off. The fact is we have a DOE, the PSP has become a political playground, shut it down and farm out the mission to someone who is held accountable by the electorate.
Posted Wed, Dec 22, 3:16 p.m. Inappropriate
Political corruption using environmental organizations, public, private and 'partnership' is rampant in Washington and has been used to politically bully much of the private sector including development and manufacturing.
Gregoire's legacy at DOE implementing the SEPA was a good one, what that legacy has turned into is an ongoing tragedy by many measures.
Posted Wed, Dec 22, 3:28 p.m. Inappropriate
DOE is an agency corrupted by political agenda, as well. They are implementing regulatory streamflows that have no scientific merit, but are designed to further no-growth agendas of the agency's benefactors (Democrats, "environmentalists" and tribes).
Additionally, DOE is set to introduce legislation expanding its authorities (they had to pull the fee proposal portion of their bill). Citizens should not allow that agency more power. Further, should Gregoire attempt to "consolidate" unto DOE responsibilities now held by different agencies, citizens should suspect a similar deck-stacking as she's done with the PSP and UW College of the Environment.
And when discussing the cartel don't forget these guys: consultants. They've made out like bandits. Literally.
Posted Wed, Dec 22, 10 p.m. Inappropriate
I wonder if we are making the problem -- as complex as it is -- yet more complicated, and with claims of need for radical change etc etc, than it needs to be.
So far as I can understand from the PSP web-site, the core issue is fairly straightforward -- Low Impact Development (LID), both for future development and to retrofit what we have already built.
Will that be expensive? I imagine so. But what troubled me -- and maybe I missed it in the PSP site - is that there is no back of the envelope discussion of what in fact it will cost. And such $$$ numbers exist.
Consider, for example, the parking lot on the west side of Northgate Mall. So far as I can tell, that is supposed to be a method for cleaning up the numero uno problem -- storm water run off from parking lots and roads. So how much did it cost? Has it been effective (scientifically)? How many parking lots (throughout the region) could be retrofitted and at what cost? and what scientific benefit? Those numbers can be found. But wher are they? They start to offer practical solutions to one very significant part of the problem. But I can't get a handle on them from PSP.
My hunch is that the language of "it's basically a land use issue" is so huge and obviously contentious that it stymies practical discussion.
Posted Thu, Dec 23, 8:44 a.m. Inappropriate
Take a look at the PSP orgchart: http://www.psp.wa.gov/downloads/org_chart_2010_update9_15_10.pdf
Who ARE all these people and what do they DO???
Nice website, but no mission, no metrics, no measurement, no accountability. Blow it up, or turn it into a 3-person public outreach unit of DOE, because there is value in "rolling up" the monitoring and other data from various sources into a Sound-wide perspective.
Posted Thu, Dec 23, 8:57 a.m. Inappropriate
"Who ARE all these people and what do they DO???"
Who are they? Loyal Democrats
What do they do: Provide "scientific" support for the Democratic Party's regulatory agenda.
Posted Sun, Dec 26, 4:26 p.m. Inappropriate
Not often I agree with Blue Light but he raises some tough questions. Hard to believe, but just maybe David Dicks was the person for PSP and the person for UW but still it looks bad bad bad......hard to see how this kind of stuff helps Puget Sound or anywhere else.
Posted Wed, Dec 29, 2:41 p.m. Inappropriate
Start with EPA,,,, Then Dept of Ecology,,,, whatever happened to enforcing the NPDES?
why has the state been allowed to monopolize stormwater pollution?
the reason there is no accountability, because their is no one in charge,,,,everyone assumes the bureaucrats know best.
I saw this coming 20 years ago,,,, don't enforce a law to get businesses to be accountable for their stormwater pollution,,, instead charge businesses and residents a fee, and grow the bureaucracy and create an unsustainable agency of do-nothings. Now we have a huge department of high paid fingerpointers.
Had government enforced the laws, we could have spawned a whole new industry of ecofreindly/green businesses that filter stormwater before reaching Puget Sound.
Take a bow Governor, job well done.
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