Perhaps in an attempt to differentiate herself from incumbent Mayor Greg Nickels, City Councilwoman and mayoral hopeful Jan Drago “called on citizens to hold Mayor Greg Nickels accountable for management failures in the city Department of Transportation.”
“If the mayor refuses to hold anyone in the Transportation Department accountable for management failures, then the people of Seattle should hold the mayor accountable,” Drago said in a statement Monday morning. “This administration’s response to management failures has been to announce that the deputy mayor would meet with the Transportation Department ‘every two weeks’ and that ‘no one is losing their job over this.’
“That is an unacceptable response to me and to the people of Seattle,” Drago said. “If I were mayor, I would be meeting on a daily basis with department management until I was certain problems were corrected, not delegating this issue to a deputy.”
A Drago spokeswoman couldn’t say if she was calling on transportation director Grace Crunican’s removal. We’re also awaiting responses from Nickels and the other mayoral candidates.
Drago was unavailable for comment, but her main problem appears to be whether voters see her as all that different from Nickels.
However, she has tried to draw a distinction between herself and Nickels by criticizing Nickels’ style.
She said at her campaign kickoff in May: “I don’t think any of us can remember a time when Seattle was less respected, when Seattle had less influence in the Legislature or in the region. When the first stimulus funds came to the state, how much did Seattle get?”
Last week, Drago issued another statement saying she was going to call Crunican to appear before the transportation committee.
“This administration can no longer keep hiding its management problems from the council and the public,” Drago said.
In attacking Nickels on transportation, Drago is also going after what’s become the two-time incumbent’s Achilles’ heel, after the fallout over snow removal last winter and charges of discrimination in the Transportation Department.
Nickels, in response to discrimination allegations said, “We expect more from the city of Seattle.” Nickels charged Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis to oversee reforms in the division.
Ceis said at a news conference: “It's not acceptable to the mayor. It’s not acceptable to the people of Seattle who rely on our services. We’ll hold SDOT accountable, and the mayor will hold me accountable.”
In an interview with the PostGlobe in June, Nickels said: “My opponents are going to talk a lot of about the shocking revelation that I’ve made mistakes. Yes, I have made mistakes. A big part of being mayor is all about learning and listening and not making the same mistakes a second time. That’s one of the exciting things about the job. There are surprises. When you start, you never really know for sure how it’s going to end up. So you have to be flexible, and you have to be adaptable and deal with what needs to be dealt with for this city to do well. I learned that over the last eight years, and for the most part, I think I’ve done well. I will make more mistakes, but they will be different ones.”
He also said in the interview, “When I look back on my time as mayor, whether it’s eight years or 12 years or 16 years or whatever, I will know what I’ve accomplished.” But there’s much he still wants to do.
Drago said the next committee meeting would focus in large part on questions regarding reports in The Seattle Times of botched street projects. Drago said she particularly is concerned about this statement in The Times:
“When The Times investigated, we found that it was impossible to say how many street projects have been fouled up and redone. Until we asked, the city Transportation Department did not systematically track its mistakes. Instead, the cost of the do-overs was simply rolled into the department’s maintenance budget.”
Drago said: “This is very disturbing. You can’t fix what’s broken if you don’t even know it’s broken.”
