Incompetence Has Gained Upper Hand

Local governments all over Washington ought to take an interest in the Alice-in-Wonderland process by which the state has undercut Spokane’s effort to replace a decrepit downtown bridge.

Let’s review: For decades, Spokane planned to construct a Lincoln Street bridge to replace the crumbling, inefficiently located Post Street Bridge. The project was publicly aired, intensely debated, exhaustively studied. City, state and federal transportation authorities granted approval and funding for work to proceed. So, the city spent $3.5 million on engineering design and $2.2 million on land acquisition.

Just over a year ago, a state Ecology Department bureaucrat issued a very belated two-sentence order overturning a city shorelines permit for the bridge. The project was aesthetically distasteful, this official felt, thereby sweeping aside work by a citizen task force and city officials who came to the opposite conclusion.

The city appealed Ecology’s decision to the state Shorelines Hearings Board. That six-member board could not muster a majority for a decision; three members sided with Ecology and three sided with the city. The three who sided with Ecology rejected Ecology’s aesthetic concern but invented another: anointing themselves as traffic-management experts, these shoreline-protection experts concluded that traffic data showed Spokane didn’t really need the bridge. The other three board members agreed with the city that traffic data do justify the bridge.

If state environmental agencies can only produce a mishmash of belated contradictions, shouldn’t there be a preference for the decisions of local government and the state and federal agencies with transportation expertise? No, said the Shorelines Hearings Board last week. We can’t agree, so the city loses.

Meanwhile, state and federal transportation departments threaten to demand repayment of money they previously authorized the city to spend on the project. Also, the state won’t fund efforts to pursue a rebuilding of the deteriorating Monroe Street Bridge unless the city takes the Lincoln Street mess to court.

The state’s conduct is preposterous. The city has to appeal.

If the Lincoln Street project is canceled, Spokane will have no funds to remove and replace the dangerous Post Street Bridge. The city has done no wrong. It is trying to replace crucial, deteriorated infrastructure. Its reward is to be bushwhacked and threatened at the 11th hour by arrogant, indecisive state and federal agencies.

Your tax dollars at work.