SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Mark Harmsworth doesn’t want another ‘political hack’ running WSDOT
Feb 8, 2016, 12:10 PM
Following the surprise vote by the Washington State Senate not to confirm Lynn Peterson's re-appointment as head of WSDOT, Gov. Jay Inslee must find a replacement. (AP)
(AP)
State Rep. Mark Harmsworth has a few hopes for the next Secretary of the Washington State Department of Transportation: That he or she comes from the private sector and isn’t another “political hack.”
Following the surprise vote by the Washington State Senate not to confirm Lynn Peterson’s re-appointment as head of WSDOT, Gov. Jay Inslee must find a replacement.
Related: Does Lynn Peterson firing signify war in the State Senate?
Harmsworth told AM 770 KTTH’s Todd Herman that Inslee will put together a short list of potential replacements for the Senate to consider. He could make an interim appointment, too. Harmsworth said the new WSDOT leader will need to look systematically across the entire organization to figure out what is going wrong.
“Maybe it’s the next level down we need to start looking at, ‘OK what’s going on here?'” Harmsworth said. “A lot of the people who are doing … the day-to-day execution, the directors of these departments, are following the direction from [the secretary]. But we need to definitely start looking at those positions and figure out, ‘OK, within these individual departments, are they working?’ If not, then maybe it’s a time for a change there, but that’s gonna be up to the next secretary to make that change.”
Ultimately, Harmsworth said the leader of WSDOT needs to look at the whole picture of transportation around the state.
“I think what you’re seeing is an agency that is tone deaf and it’s not listening to what people are saying or it feels that it’s the expert in all these situations,” he said.
Harmsworth says Inslee has an agenda about how he wants to see transportation infrastructure develop, but that he hopes the governor will consider appointing someone with a more diverse set of ideas.
“I’d love to see someone come in who has maybe had a good amount of experience in an engineering role in private industry and bring a different perspective …” he said. “What I don’t want to see is another political hack getting into that position and then blindly following one, sort of, dogma, approach to transportation. What I want to see is someone with some new, fresh ideas that are really going to work for the people of this state.”
Follow @http://twitter.com/Mynorthwest
