The Tunnel Is On The Chopping Block

Recently Governor Gregoire's been taking a lot of heat for her ambivalent handling of the Viaduct sitchyation we got here. Today, the Seattle Times rides to her rescue. The blame-reallocating story by David Postman and Andrew Garber begins:

Gov. Christine Gregoire got so frustrated trying to broker a compromise between Mayor Greg Nickels and House Speaker Frank Chopp on the Alaskan Way Viaduct that she turned to a Republican wise man for advice.

"She called ... and said, 'I've got a big problem,' " said former Gov. Dan Evans. Gregoire and her staff felt stuck between Nickels' dream of a tunnel and Chopp's demand for a new elevated highway along Seattle's waterfront. "They were kind of at wits' end," he said.

Poor guvvie-wubbie! A big problem? Let poppa Evans tell you what he'd do! Huh. Is that helplessness supposed to be helping the governor's image? (Memo to Chris: Fire everyone on staff with PR in their title.) We were under the impression that politics was the preferred playground for ego-clashes of the Chopp v. Nickels variety. We know Nickels can't wait to play down at the waterfront with all the trucks and tractors. But just what is it Chopp wants? To keep his lunch money, sounds like. Postman has follow-up to the story on his blog, where he quotes DOT Secretary Doug MacDonald as saying:

My understanding has been that Frank has taken the position that he would see to it that there would not be funding for a tunnel. It doesn't have anything to do with the elevated. It has to do with the adamant Chopp position, which is clear, that there would not be funding for a tunnel.

It's good that we're getting these differences aired out. But if all this airing out keeps up, asthma rates are gonna skyrocket. Postman reports on the poor "plays well with others" grade WSDOT is getting for excluding Seattle DOT from the "newly re-started review of the tunnel-lite proposed by Mayor Greg Nickels." When two DOTs collide! And we thought Monday might be a slow news day. Thanks, David!