Port of Seattle To Justify "Wasteful" Spending With New Audit

We get a perverse thrill out of covering the Port of Seattle. They're as baffling as Mariners' skipper Hargrove, but without the fans. In our own little way, we try to spread the word. Someone must tell the people.

Now the P-I's intrepid Kristen Millares Bolt has ventured into the Port's non-reality-based realm and lived to tell the tale. As you know, the Port's ludicrous history of financial mismanagement, rivaled only in history by Louis XIV's camping budget, has resulted in demands that the Port do a better job of auditing its performance. Duly chastened, the port's audit committee -- Commission President Pat Davis and Bob Edwards, commission past president -- have come up with a plan: Rather than focus on minimizing high costs through more careful controls, the port will focus on justifying why its costs ought to be much higher, through comparisons with other similarly-sized organizations' projects.

That is, the Port is paying to have a CYA audit done, rather than admit that changes need to be made.

From the P-I:

Absent from [Davis's] analysis was the idea that the port might save money by some other way than eliminating neighborhood-friendly mitigation or safety measures. "If you are doing a cost benchmarking study and then stop, that is not a performance audit," said Chris Cortines, the local government performance audit coordinator at the state Auditor's Office. "The distinction is this: How effective are they in managing contracts and controlling their costs?"

Good question. We may be about to find out, since the state Auditor's Office is performing a Port audit of its own, one that isn't interested whether everyone else is jumping off the same bridge the Port is so fond of.