DOT reverses course, finds extra $7.6 million for Washington state ferries

By Les Blumenthal | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Only 24 hours after announcing virtually zero funding for Washington state's ferry systems, the federal Department of Transportation reversed itself Wednesday and said it would provide an additional $7.6 million in stimulus cash.

The reversal came after Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., muscled Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who promised to "expedite" a review of why his department had not awarded any of the $60 million in ferry stimulus grants to the state's ferries.

Murray chairs the Senate transportation appropriations subcommittee, which controls the purse strings for the Transportation Department. The subcommittee is scheduled to mark up next year's funding bill for the department next week.

The senator had inserted the $60 million in ferry grants in the stimulus bill approved by Congress earlier this year and was furious Tuesday when the grants were announced and the state's ferries were mostly shut out.

In her phone conversation with LaHood, Murray said she made clear she felt there had been a mistake and "he agreed. He said he was sorry about the oversight and rectified it."

Murray said it was clear to LaHood that she was the chair of the transportation appropriations subcommittee and had inserted the ferry grant money in the stimulus bill.

"I had worked hard for this," Murray said. "I thanked him for being responsive."

Murray said she wouldn't carry a grudge.

"I don't punish people who do the right thing," she said.

In a statement, LaHood said he was "pleased" to announce the additional funding and thanked Murray for her leadership.

"These projects are worthy of our support," he said.

Ten days ago, LaHood rode the Seattle-Bremerton ferry with Gov. Chris Gregoire and Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash, while on a visit to the state. Those accompanying LaHood said he was impressed with the state's ferries.

LaHood had no idea the ferry systems in Washington state would receive only 1 percent or so of the $60 million in grants announced Tuesday, said a department spokeswoman, who asked not to be identified because she was not speaking for the department officially.

"It was ridiculous," the spokeswoman said of the lack of funding for Washington ferries. "We found the additional money."

The spokeswoman confirmed Murray's role in securing the additional funding.

"She is very important and we recognize that," she said.

The spokeswoman said the grants were aimed at bolstering ferries in economically distressed areas, and such Washington counties as King County didn't meet that qualification.

The Washington state Department of Transportation, which operates the nation's largest ferry system, will now receive $3 million to help replace its Anacortes Terminal. Kitsap Transit will receive $2.6 million to procure a prototype, passenger-only, fast ferry for the Seattle-Bremerton run, and the King County Ferry District will receive $2 million for a passenger-only ferry that would be used on a Seattle-Vashon Island run.

On Tuesday, the department awarded a $750,000 grant to the Skagit County Public Works Department for the Guemes Island ferry.

All told, the state's ferry systems will be receiving more than $8.3 million, more than any of the other 19 states that were awarded grants.

Gregoire, in a statement, said the additional funding was "great news" and praised Murray.

But Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., whose district includes the San Juan Islands, which are dependant on ferries, said he was concerned the same thing could happen in the future.

"I demand a full explanation of how this bizarre decision came to be made in the first place," Larsen said. "If they fail to remedy the process that allowed this incredible oversight, there will be future problems for Washington state and our country."

The state, along with the counties and various ferry districts, had sought a total of $56 million in stimulus grants and were stunned when the only money awarded was for the Guemes Island ferry.

"Isn't it great how the world turns," Paula Hammond, secretary of the Washington state Department of Transportation, said Wednesday. "Apparently the senator and the governor had a long talk with the secretary and apparently it worked."

Hammond said that even though the state ferry system was receiving only $3 million, the funding for the other system was important.

"It's a collective and integrated system," she said.

Powered by Qumana

$60m in ARRA Funds for Ferry Facilities

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced $60m in grants to 19 states and one U.S. territory to improve ferry service and save and create jobs under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“The Recovery Act was put in place quickly to rescue the economy from the worst recession since the Great Depression and rebuild it for a stronger future,” said Secretary LaHood. “Rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure is a key part of that prescription for strength. It creates jobs today and builds for better, more sustainable economy moving forward.”

"The projects we selected will help put people back to work and at the same time offer more access to areas that lack transportation options,” said Secretary LaHood. “It is about providing more travel choices to people from communities that need it the most.”

The Secretary added that most of the projects selected are located in economically distressed areas and will address critical transportation needs. The improvements will be made quickly to satisfy ARRA’s emphasis on immediate economic recovery through infrastructure investment. Priority is given to projects that can be completed in two years or less.

The largest projects are in Nueces, Texas, where a bridge or tunnel is not feasible, and Detroit, Michigan, where ferry service to the suburbs is necessary. Both ferry projects represent key solutions to connect communities and respond to growing traffic needs in the regions.

ARRA provides the $60 million to the Federal Highway Administration’s Ferry Boat Discretionary program, which is intended for the construction and repair of ferry boats and terminal facilities.

Powered by Qumana

Worker Privacy Act killed - WSLC

The Washington State Labor Council's priority legislation for 2009 was the Worker Privacy Act. SB 5446 and HB 1528 would have allowed workers in Washington state to choose whether or not to participate in employer communication on issues of individual conscience, including politics, religion, unionization, and charitable giving.

The WPA inspired thousands of e-mails, phone calls and letters of support to legislators. It had 47 sponsors in the House and 21 sponsors in the Senate, and plenty of votes to pass, according to vote counts both by the WSLC and by lobbyists in the business community who oppose the legislation.

But the WPA never got a vote -- in either house -- because it was derailed by Gov. Chris Gregoire, House Speaker Frank Chopp and Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown. All three of these Democratic leaders had previously told the WSLC they supported the legislation, but ultimately they were swayed by Boeing and other business interests that the WPA would harm the state’s "business climate."

Even worse, rather than simply explaining why they now opposed the legislation and blocked the floor votes, these three leaders blamed an e-mail sent by a WSLC staff member for the bill’s demise.

With the March 11 deadline looming for a floor vote, Gregoire, Chopp and Brown issued a joint statement claiming that allowing a vote on the WPA was "no longer an option" due to an e-mail someone showed them that "raises serious legal and ethical questions." They referred the matter to the Washington State Patrol to investigate whether criminal charges should be filed.

The e-mail was an internal report of a strategy meeting of labor leaders and lobbyists who supported the WPA, but it was inadvertently copied to four state legislators, all of whom were WPA sponsors. This e-mail, which began with the salutation "Brothers and Sisters," included several bulleted items updating on efforts to achieve a floor vote, one of which indicated that union leaders were considering withholding contributions to State Democratic Party funds if a vote was blocked. "Union leaders would send a message... ‘not another dime from labor’ until the Governor signs the Worker Privacy Act," the e-mail read.

The three Democratic leaders took the specter that unions might choose not to contribute to their party as a threat, and referred the matter to the police. The State Patrol quickly determined there was nothing illegal about the e-mail, and the Public Disclosure Commission subsequently decided no action would be taken against the WSLC lobbyist who sent the e-mail.

Political observers and bloggers all agreed that the e-mail -- which was not sent to Gregoire, Brown or Chopp, but inadvertently copied to a few legislators who were strong supporters of the WPA -- was not a threat at all, but was made a pretext for killing the WPA.

That was confirmed when the effort to get a floor vote resumed and Gregoire told reporters that if the bill reached her desk, she wouldn’t sign it unless Boeing is exempted from its provisions: "I made it clear before this took place that if the bill applied to Boeing, it will not get past my desk."

At a meeting held later that week with the WSLC and key affiliates that support the WPA, Gregoire, Chopp and Brown were unapologetic and reiterated their opposition to the legislation.

"This entire incident has severely strained labor’s relationship with Democratic leaders," said WSLC President Rick Bender. "We still consider their actions (regarding the e-mail) to have been a dramatic overreaction. While the leadership still insists they support the causes of working families, they have a long way to go in order to rekindle the trust and rebuild the relationship with the labor community.

Powered by Qumana

PVA President Testifies Before Congress

In testimony before Congress, PVA President Bill Clark told legislators that the Coast Guard’s centralized system for issuing merchant mariner credentials must be improved.

Captain Clark, who is also co-owner and operator of South Ferry, Inc., of Shelter Island, N.Y. testified before the House Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation on the subject of the Coast Guard’s National Maritime Center and Mariner Credentials.

“PVA is aware of too many instances in which a mariner has been prevented from working because of credentialing processing delays,” said Captain Clark. “We don’t buy into the notion that a properly completed application should be held up in-system awaiting assignment to an evaluator.”

Key points of Captain Clark’s testimony include:
• Coast Guard credentials are essential for a mariner to be able to obtain a new job or to continue in an existing one. Delays threaten a mariner’s livelihood.
• The National Maritime Center’s (NMC) average processing time of 80 days must be drastically reduced. Mariners must also do their part by ensuring that their application package is complete.
• Many delays have been associated with those applications for which medical reviews had to be done. It is imperative that the NMC maintain adequate staffing levels to carry-out medial reviews expeditiously.
• With respect to medical evaluations, a bad situation will become even worse if the Coast Guard changes the requirement for a mariner evaluation to every two years instead of the current every five years. PVA urges the Coast Guard to delay any move towards two-year evaluations until the current system demonstrates that it can issue credentials in a timely manner.
• PVA urges the Coast Guard to expand its “trusted agent” program as a way to ease the pressures on the NMC by ensuring that mariners submit complete and accurate applications.
• There should be one or more merchant mariners on staff at NMC to serve as a point of contact for mariners and who can advocate for them within the NMC.

A copy of PVA’s full written statement can be accessed at: http://www.pvastaff.com/pvamemberupdate/pvaCGCtestimony.pdf

Powered by Qumana

OLYMPIA: Meeting to include ferry fare increase plan - The Olympian.com

U.S. transportation policy, naming of a portion of state Route 529 in Snohomish County, ferry fare adjustments and the state’s aviation plan are among the agenda items for this week’s Washington State Transportation Commission meeting.


The meeting will begin at 9 a.m. Tuesday and Wednesday at the Transportation Building, 310 Maple Park Ave. S.E., Olympia. The meeting will be open to the public, and the commission will take public comment at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday and 11:45 a.m. Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the Washington state Department of Transportation’s Ferries Division will present its proposal for a 2.5 percent across-the-board general fare increase.

For more information, call Reema Griffith, Transportation Commission executive director, at 360-705-7070.

Powered by Qumana

Flawed security process costs dockworkers jobs - WSLC

Thousands of longshore workers, truck drivers and other workers at ports across the nation are out of work, not because of a staggering economy, but because they are caught up in a backlogged, inefficient and often inaccurate screening process for background security checks.

According to a new report from the National Employment Law Project (NELP), the federal Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA’s) post-Sept. 11 port worker background checks have put thousands of otherwise qualified and experienced port workers on the streets instead of the docks, with no rights to back pay once they gain their security clearance.

Most of the workers caught in this bureaucratic limbo are members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), Longshoremen (ILA) and Teamsters (IBT).

The report is the first evaluation of the worker protections in TSA’s Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC). It finds that thousands of workers—disproportionately African American and Latino men—have had to wait an average of seven months while their applications are reviewed, leaving them unable to work and support their families in the midst of a devastating recession.

According to the report, “A Scorecard on the Post-9/11 Port Worker Background Checks,” more than 10,000 workers had lost their jobs while awaiting TSA approval of their TWIC cards after the April 14 compliance deadline passed. Laura Moskowitz, a NELP attorney who led the study, says:

Due to serious problems with the FBI’s records, insufficient staffing and poor TSA screening protocols, there have been major processing delays for workers at ports, which means that large numbers of hard-working families are being left out in the cold at the worst possible time.

To be approved for access to the ports, applicants are subject to criminal background checks using the FBI’s database, immigration status and other security checks. However, the report notes that 50 percent of the FBI’s rap sheets are incomplete or out of date. Contrary to the federal law, TSA denies credentials in an overly broad range of cases such as open arrests, even if they have been dismissed or addressed.

When a worker is denied a security clearance and decides to appeal, Moskowitz says:

TSA and the FBI put the entire burden on the worker to collect the necessary information to clear their records and navigate the process all on their own, which then leaves thousands of workers falling through the cracks of the TWIC program.

It also finds that while worker protections in the program’s appeal process take far too long, eventually almost all workers win their credential cards on appeal. More than 24,000 workers, largely African American and Latinos, were able to keep their jobs with the help of the special protections for workers who are initially denied a credential card based on their record.

The report offers a series of recommendations for TWIC reform, including expediting the cases of workers who have been shut out of the ports, tracking down missing FBI information before issuing denials, adopting strict timeframes for processing applications and better handling of applications from foreign-born workers.

Click here for a look at the full report.

Powered by Qumana

AFL-CIO NOW BLOG | The Employee Free Choice Act: From 2003 to Today

AFL-CIO NOW BLOG | The Employee Free Choice Act: From 2003 to Today

Shared via AddThis