The long, blue-uniformed arm of the law
Posted by Scott "The Piper" St. Clair - October 31, 2008If officials at Washington State Ferries or members of the Washington Legislature won’t listen to the people, then sometimes it takes a regulatory club swung by a federal agency upside their collective heads to get their attention.
In 2005, Washington voters approved by a stampede landslide (57 percent yes to 43 percent no) a measure to authorize the State Auditor’s Office to conduct performance audits on state and local governmental agencies. One of the first targets was WSF.
The September 2007 performance audit conducted by the SAO identified substantial cost savings that could come about by scheduling ferry runs when people actually wanted to ride ferries – novel concept that, eh what? - rather than when it was convenient and lucrative for WSF employees and mandated by their union contracts.
Coupled with similar cost savings that could be attained by being even slightly flexible in the hours of work at its Eagle Harbor maintenance facility, taxpayers stood to save north of $100 million over ten years.
“How cool is that?” You think that would be the first question out of the mouths of the transportation committee chairs in the State Senate and House. And you’d think WSF management would echo the sentiment such that they would eagerly take the PA suggestions to union negotiations and bargain as if they were in a Persian rug bazaar until the unions capitulated from shear exhaustion.
Nope and nope. Legislative leaders treated the PA as if it were an invitation to a Jim Jones-sponsored Kool Aid tasting. No hearings, no bills introduced to implement the findings – nothing but hiss, boo and scornful looks.
WSF officials were more clever: they buried the PA so deep in their bureaucratic sand box you’ll need to make a journey to the center of the earth to find it. It’s been over 13-months since the PA was published; yet Ferries is still “studying” the recommendations.
Problem is, however, that they were studying so hard down at WSF’s 3rd & Broad headquarters, they missed the test – bargaining for new union contracts is over, done with, and devoid of even a hint of productivity improvements or cost savings. Having now flunked, it will be two years before they can repeat the course since new union negotiations won’t take place until spring and summer of 2010.
So, who should stick their collective blue-uniformed nose into all this? None other than the United States Coast Guard.
In early August, WSF main man, David Moseley, received a letter from the Coast Guard directing him to see to it that ferry schedules are altered so that no deck officer exceeds a maximum of 12 hours work in any 24-hour period. In other words, no more scheduling of the very popular and very lucrative for employees “double-back” or “touring shifts,” some of the very shifts complained of in the PA.
Odd, however, that the five-page USCG letter, a copy of which was slipped to Evergreen Freedom Foundation not long after it was received, allows engineering crew members to work 13 hours in a 24-hour period. I suppose you have to chalk that up to, “It’s the government, remember?”
The ostensible USCG rationale for the change is its worry about pooped personnel on the poop deck and the failure of both WSF and the unions representing said personnel to do anything about it.
Uhm…there was this thing in the performance audit? About eliminating unnecessary runs that couldn’t be justified by customer demands for them?
Oh, but pish-tosh on that noise! To listen to Transportation Committee chair Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, ferries will run even if they run devoid of cars and people – heaven forbid a late night ferry might not be available for one of her constituents needing to make a wee-hours run to the doctor or get across the water to a 7-11 to get some smokes.
And the response to the PA from the unions has been, well, unprintable on a family-friendly blog or Web site.
So the federal big stick had to be applied to force Ferries to make some changes. How does that reality bite for WSF and Sen. Haugen? It’s probably going down about as well as one of those alleged “hamburgers” served on board the ferries.
And the performance audit itself? With the respect and deference accorded it by WSF and the Legislature (that’s you, Mary Margaret Haugen), might as well send it to the shredder. Like, what else is new?
The Piper
Thoughts? Add Comment -
Elaine said on Nov 02 2008 at 8:14am
Thank you Tim Enyman for allowing the exposure of the waste and fraud in our state government.
Unfortunately, just because the incompetency of state employees is wide out in the open and taxpayers can see for themselves how corrupt and inept their elected leaders are doesn't mean anything will change. This article proves that recommendations for improvements and cost savings are ignored and pooh-poohed.
So until it is mandatory that state agencies follow the recommendations outlined in these audits taxpayers are really only getting zapped for the expense of the audits as well as still funding waste and fraud.