“A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their government and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it’s going to get.” – Ian Williams Goddard
“The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.” – Gore Vidal
The Columbia River Project, known by the acronym CRC, is once again scurrying around acting defensively as more light is shined on the project. Just like cock roaches scurry away when a light is shined on them, pundits supporting the boondoggle project are lining up and making excuses for the latest revelation on the project, potentially violating public meeting laws and deliberately discouraging public involvement.
Acclaimed Forensic Accountant Tiffany Couch, of Acuity Group PLLC in Vancouver sent out her latest report last evening, along with exhibits that include internal memos from the early days of the project citing discouraging public input.
The announcement said,
“After conducting an in-depth assessment of various documents, conducting public records requests, and analyzing comments made during public meetings, Ms. Couch has identified areas of concern with regard to a decision making body called the Project Sponsors Council as well as potential violations of the Washington State Open Public Meetings Act.”
At issue is a memo from Marcy Schwartz/CRC that has in its body,
“The approval of the locally preferred alternative by the PSC would trigger individual agency public hearings. Each elected official body (Board of Directors, Commission, City Council, and so on) would take action, presumably to endorse the locally preferred alternative recommended by the PSC. The PSC members would be entrusted to make the other decisions on behalf of their fellow elected officials with no need for public hearings or individual agency endorsements.”
“The decision meetings would be open to the public, but only minimum legal notices would be provided and no display advertising would be placed. We would not encourage public participation.”(Emphasis added)
Bearing in mind that the Columbian remains wholly in the tank for this project, their article includes comments from former Clark County Commissioner Betty Sue Morris who was part of the groundwork initiating the CRC and a participant in its earlier days.
Morris says, “I don’t recall that there was an effort to keep it secret or behind closed doors or anything like that.”
Considering the secretive nature we have observed so far with the CRC, one wonders just where she was.
Ms. Couch has released reports in the past after finding questionable practices pertaining to the CRC and was even the subject of a lawsuit filed by David Evans and Associates, the largest recipient of funds from the CRC to date when records were sought of what the funds they received were being paid for, later dropped.
Earlier reports finding questionable accounting practices were marginalized and largely covered up by a WSDOT “independent” internal audit, even though they admitted they would need to change some of their practices.
Vancouver businessman and County Commissioner candidate David Madore has written of the unraveling of the CRC as well as hiring Acuity Group to audit a document dump he received under a freedom of information act request.
A previous post covered the possibility of this boondoggle violating the High Capacity Transit Act with citizens not being given an opportunity to vote on whether we even want this project.
Instead, local elected rulers opted to bypass citizens and instead allow us to vote on w=how we will fund the Operations & Maintenance of the extension of Portland, Oregon’s financially failing light rail into our community after we voted it down more than once.
The effort to just do an end run around voters was revealed in the Willamette Week article, The $2.5 Billion Bribe and remains ignored by both the Columbian and the CRC.
Discussing the CRC with 3rd Congressional District Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler recently, she said to me,
“No one has checked this group at all, the CRC group and the supporters and the Project Sponsors Council.”
Adding that I would like to see a Justice Department Investigation of the project, she added,
“We’ve been doing everything we can to make sure and we talked about trying to get some kind of Inspector General Investigation.”
After some small talk she added,
“I have to tell you there are really very, very powerful, I haven’t even found them all out, but there are very powerful interests pushing this project and I think it is going to drain our economy.”
Many of us can see through the elected rulers’ smokescreen and know it is going to drain our economy. It has already cost taxpayers over $160 Million and they haven’t been able to design a bridge with adequate clearance for river traffic, opting to “mediate” with the U.S. Coast Guard in hopes of gaining approval for an inferior design.
Ms Herrera Beutler has spoken with Ms. Couch more than once and no doubt has received a copy of this latest report.
The Columbian and the CRC will undoubtedly continue their campaign of marginalizing serious concerns people have over this boondoggle.
But the information is out there and freely available.
We all need to hold Congresswoman Herrera Beutler’s feet to the fire demanding she keep calling for an Investigation into this whole project and anybody concerned with it.
In the meantime, we all need to support candidates willing to take a critical look at the CRC and shine light on the cock roaches. Candidates like David Madore and Don Benton, two of the most outspoken and Debbie Peterson, Carolyn Crain, Eileen Qutub, Liz Pike and Tom Mielke, all of whom see there are serious problems with the project.
Keep the light on and keep the cock roaches scurrying.
