Port Of Seattle Reduces Us Again To A Blind, Gibbering Rage

A tottering bastion of Seattle's old boys' club (we include Pat Davis as an honorary member), the Port is known primarily for being a hole that taxpayers pour money into. Fair elections have foisted two fiscally responsible commissioners onto the Port's management, Alec Fisken and Lloyd Hara. Recently, Fisken raised the question as to why the "Port of Seattle's seaport had a lot more money coming in than the Port of Vancouver last year, but it lost $24 million while the Canadian port made $28 million" (on $20 million less in revenue).

The Port has responded by making it clear that Fisken and Hara are "outsiders" who don't understand "how things work around here," and "make it difficult for honest people to make a living on the docks." (Ed. note: Those quotation marks are purely ironic, aren't they?) From the P-I:

"I hope you get to know the port better," Dinsmore said to Fisken on Tuesday. Part of the reason for Dinsmore's dismay with Fisken, he said, was that Fisken "hadn't even been offshore yet." Fisken does not participate in the all-expense-paid, port-sponsored trade missions to other countries to speak with clients and competitors.

To recap, a) Dinsmore is already wildly overpaid, b) he's leaving the Port anyway, so the raise is moot in terms of motivation, c) cargo container volume had decreased during the review period, d) it had increased primarily because of congestion at other ports to begin with, e) the Port lost important clients during the review period, f) the Port's management of Sea-Tac led Southwest Air and Alaska Air to threaten to leave recently, a move that was only stalled when g) Ron Sims put the kibosh on it, not the Port.

The cappers come from the usual scratch-my-back suspects:

"My goodness, Mic, didn't I see you on national television talking about port security?" said past president Bob Edwards. ("National television!" we exclaim to ourselves. "Why, give him as much money as a donkey can bear away then!")

Commissioner John Creighton, the tie-breaker, said the raise would send a message to the market that the Port would treat Dinsmore's replacement well. (What market? There's a market for fiscally irresponsible chief officers who quit on you?)

And Pat Davis summed up what most of were thinking:

Davis said if commissioners had problems with Dinsmore's performance, they should look inward. "By evaluating you, we are evaluating ourselves," Davis told Dinsmore.

She's right, of course. Pat, Bob, John: you've been evaluated. You're easily as overpaid and out-of-touch as Mic. Don't let the door hit your asses on the way out.