Washington state’s troubled Puget Sound Partnership continues trying to reinvent itself.
Can you blame it?
Even by the standards of government waste and inefficiency, the PSP long ago outlived whatever usefulness it might once have had — assuming it ever did.
The latest signature accomplishment for an agency that bills itself as “the backbone of organization for Puget Sound recovery,” is yet another self-described exercise in image resuscitation in the form of a snazzy new — and completely incomprehensible — logo.
In response to a query about the new icon and what it was supposed to express, Alicia Lawver, the agency’s public information officer, responded, “The logo is an abstract representation intended to communicate the vision and focus that our new leadership has brought to the organization.
“The organic shapes,” she continued, “inspired by the letter ‘P’ – symbolize the relationship between our agency and the larger partnership that includes hundreds of governments, tribes, businesses, nonprofits, science leaders and other interested parties. The two shapes coming together represent our role in the context of this collective recovery effort. We are many things to many people, so the abstract nature of the logo is also open to interpretation and can be seen as a water drop, a leaf, an abstract salmon or orca, and so much more.”
Got all that, art lovers?
None of which is to suggest Washington taxpayers should be outraged by a state agency commissioning an ugly logo. What should outrage them is that the Puget Sound Partnership, with its $9.4 million annual budget and 47 handsomely paid employees, still exists at all.
Remember, we’re talking about an outfit that’s been through five executive directors since it was created in 2007. To be fair, though, two of those were interim directors brought in to clean up the havoc wreaked by David Dicks during his three-year reign of terror.
The son of longtime Democratic Congressman Norm Dicks, then-36-year-old David had little or no executive experience when he was handed the keys to the fledgling Puget Sound Partnership. But in politics, competence runs a poor second to patronage, and as the offspring of the would-be chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, David Dicks was well-positioned to funnel millions of dollars in federal money to Washington.
Or so it was thought. The spigot dried up, however, when Republicans took control of Congress in 2010 and Norm Dicks subsequently retired in 2012.
For his part, David Dicks was quietly sacked in 2010, but not before establishing a legacy at the Puget Sound Partnership that will linger for decades to come — long after the agency is dead and buried if there’s any justice in this world.
Under Dicks’ enlightened “leadership,” the agency:
- awarded a $19,999 contract — $1 under the threshold required to put it out for a competitive bid — to the Seattle law firm of K&L Gates, one of Norm Dicks’ largest campaign contributors;
- spent at least $120,000 on IT goods – an amount that exceeded its original budget for IT investments for the 2007-09 biennium – and used the funds to purchase Apple Macintosh computers, which were incompatible with statewide information systems and applications for financial reporting, payroll or travel, according to a Washington State Auditor’s report;
- spent $6,853 for 120 monogrammed fleece vests, $5,044 for 30 monogrammed jackets, $3,650 for 5,000 tubes of lip balm, $687 for 20 personalized mahogany gift boxes containing sparkling apple cider for state officials and $2,474 in catering for a private reception – which state agencies are prohibited from providing according to state law — as part of a previous branding effort;
- awarded a $400,000 consulting contract to lobbyist Steve McBee and another $1 million to a company owned by Tom Luce — both former Norm Dicks’ staffers; and,
- purchased a $10,000 “membership” in the Cascade Land Conservancy — whose vice president of transactions, just by coincidence, happened to be David Dicks’ brother Ryan.
There’s more – much more – but you get the picture.
It’s debatable enough whether Washington state even needs a taxpayer-supported agency devoted just to Puget Sound when it already funds a Department of Ecology, a Department of Natural Resources, a Department of Fish and Wildlife and dozens of other agencies whose responsibilities include Puget Sound.
But it’s beyond question that agency shouldn’t be the Puget Sound Partnership, whose unparalleled history of cronyism, corruption and ineptitude isn’t going to be papered over with fancy words and objets d’art.
