PENINSULA DAILY NEWS AND THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
OLYMPIA — Gov. Christine Gregoire announced Tuesday that she’s keeping hard-charging Doug MacDonald as the state transportation director, praising his agency’s ability to bring road projects in on time without huge cost overruns.
Gregoire has been assessing MacDonald and the department for months, and kept him and key legislators guessing about his fate.
MacDonald came under sharp criticism this summer from legislators, including 24th District Rep. Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, for the Port Angeles graving yard fiasco.
Kessler’s district includes Clallam and Jefferson counties, and most of Grays Harbor County.
MacDonald a year ago canceled the multimillion-dollar project to build pontoons and anchors for the Hood Canal Bridge east half replacement at the urging of the Lower Elwha Klallam tribe.
More than 300 intact skeletons and nearly 10,000 artifacts from the 2,700-year-old Klallam village of Tse-whit-zen had been unearthed.
Transportation spent almost $60 million before shutting down work last December.
Kessler, as House majority leader, said in June that Gregoire “will probably look very carefully at [replacing MacDonald] because there are a lot of questions about the graving yard and what went wrong.”
However, MacDonald’s stock recently shot up when voters statewide sustained an $8.5 billion, 16-year transportation program that includes a four-step gas tax hike of 9.5 cents a gallon.
MacDonald had vigorously opposed the tax rollback initiative.
First use of new law
This marks Gregoire’s first use of a new law that gives the governor direct authority over the Department of Transportation, including the power to hire and fire the director.
Previously, the secretary has been hired by the citizen Transportation Commission, but lawmakers, including Kessler, decided that the agency needed to be under the direction of a governor directly accountable to the voters.
MacDonald has headed the department since April 2001. He was appointed by the commission after a nationwide search, with then-Gov. Gary Locke concurring.