PORT ANGELES — Blame: It spreads more easily than the high-priced product, especially when the issue is the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard.

State Rep. Jim Buck, R-Joyce, who called for the recently released legislative audit of the graving yard debacle, found fault with the investigation into how the state Department of Transportation spent nearly $87 million at the Port Angeles waterfront site without building any replacement components for the crumbling bridge.

“The most important question has yet to be answered,” Buck told a Tuesday morning meeting of the Port Angeles Business Association.

That issue, he said, was how U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, Gov. Chris Gregoire and former Gov. Gary Locke — all Democrats — “unilaterally” decided to abandon the yard on the Port Angeles waterfront late in 2004.

The decision came after archaeologists had uncovered 337 intact Native American burials that lay beneath the graving yard site in the crook of Ediz Hook.

Construction transferred

Construction of the bridge components — giant concrete pontoons, anchors and bridge decks — has been transferred to locations in Tacoma and Seattle.

Buck maintained that the state Legislature should have overseen the project, although almost all its funds came from the Federal Highway Administration.

He also called the graving yard an example of “the classic reoccurring turf battle between the executive branch [of government] and the Legislature.”

The Legislature might have reached the same conclusion — to close the project in Port Angeles — “but we never got the opportunity to find out,” he said.

Despite the audit’s shortcomings, Buck said he agreed with a key conclusion: Transportation’s commitment to a June 2006 deadline to complete the floating bridge components blinded it to the possibility that the project would unearth a Native American cemetery.

Likewise, the project had no single executive authority, the audit said, nor did it follow a “critical path” schedule toward completion.

“With more time and a better attitude, we would have done several things better,” said Buck.