Action against state’s former transportation secretary ‘aimed at Gov. Inslee’
Feb 9, 2016, 11:35 PM | Updated: May 6, 2016, 11:36 pm
Governor Jay Inslee calls the firing of the state’s former Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson a political beheading — an election year tactic. Republicans say she just wasn’t getting the job done.
The truth is somewhere in the middle.
Once you strip away all the name calling, all the fist-shaking and tongue-lashing from Inslee, and all the political point-scoring by Republicans, the only really relevant question is: did Lynn Peterson deserve to be fired?
Related: Snohomish County is about to experience closures it hasn’t seen in years
Her critics blame her for the delays on SR 520, including the faulty pontoons that first came out of the project. They blame her for the disaster that is the Seattle tunnel project. She gets really hammered for I-405 tolling.
To be fair, she inherited all of those projects, which were well under way. That includes the planning on I-405 tolling. But Bertha’s problems continued and some say became worse under her leadership. I-405 tolling was rolled out under her leadership.
Doug MacDonald, a former state transportation secretary, doesn’t believe Peterson deserved this.
“The action on Friday was not aimed at Lynn Peterson, it was aimed at Governor Inslee,” MacDonald said. “And so she was the victim of being in that place at that time and she’s really collateral damage to what that fight is all about.”
But MacDonald says Peterson could have done a better job expressing her plans for the state and telling the public why she was doing what she was.
“I think that over the course of three years she has been in a tough spot and she has not always been as successful as she might have been in communicating her agenda or getting out and talking to people about what is happening,” MacDonald said.
And for all of Peterson’s troubles, we shouldn’t forget she oversaw great successes, too. Who thought the state could get a new bridge over the Skagit River so quickly? And her response in Oso was pretty good.
But she’s out. What’s next? Her second in command, Roger Millar, is running the show.
MacDonald says people need to settle down and find a long-term fix for the department.
“And, again, I think this relies on a much less political environment for transportation projects and problems that have to be addressed,” MacDonald said.
The chances of that happening, considering the toxic environment in Olympia right now, are about as good as Bertha opening on time.
Related: Tell us what slows you down each day
