A man gets off a Lewis Mountain Highway Transit bus last October in Centralia.
One thing was made clear during the months-long push to expand Twin Transit bus service countywide: Not doing so would almost certainly lead to the demise of Lewis Mountain Highway Transit.
Its inability to afford increased costs associated with receiving the state grant funds that make up most of its operating budget would eliminate the only source of public transit for most Lewis County residents east of the Twin Cities, proponents said, leaving riders unable to attend medical appointments, take classes, or shop in Centralia or Chehalis.
Whether or not someone agreed that expansion would benefit themselves, surely they could see the need to keep buses running to and from Packwood, residents heard in a number of presentations.
However, Doug Hayden, executive director of the nonprofit that runs LMHT, now says that imminent danger was not only misstated, but had actually been averted the previous year due to a change in legislation. The nonprofit expects to continue to receive grant funding and to maintain its East County routes without Twin Transit’s help, contrary to statements made by board member Bobby Jackson and director Derrick Wojcik-Damers while they campaigned for expansion.
The false narrative was a central focus of promotional materials and was a cornerstone of the message pushed by those wanting to broaden the reach of public transit in Lewis County and beyond.
“There is no doubt in my mind that (Twin Transit) knew,” Hayden said.
Jackson took offense at the suggestion.
“To suggest that somehow we were dishonest in this is a stretch,” Jackson said. “A huge stretch. We did everything above-board and honestly. We never hid anything. We were honorable and up front.”
Wojcik-Damers said he never lied and that Lewis Mountain Highway Transit told Twin Transit it was going to go out of business.
“If you print that we lie, in light of all this evidence, I will pursue legal action to see what we can do to remedy that,” Wojcik-Damers told a Chronicle reporter.
The other two members of the Twin Transit Advisory Board — Centralia City Councilor Rebecca Staebler and Chehalis City Councilor Chad Taylor — both said last week that they had no knowledge of incorrect information being given out by Jackson and Wojcik-Damers on behalf of Twin Transit.
Taylor, the board chair, stated his specific disappointment in Wojcik-Damers, saying that the fact that LMHT would be able to continue operations without the expansion should have been brought to the attention of the entire board by the general manager.
He has previously expressed displeasure about how the initiative was presented to the public, telling The Chronicle on Nov. 6 that he thought Twin Transit needed to have “an open discussion” about its future plans after 65 percent of voters rejected the sales tax increase that would have funded the expansion.
From the start, proponents of the measure to expand the Twin Transit taxing district, the Lewis Public Transportation Benefit Area, said LMHT would end service in 2019 after losing its grant funding. The nonprofit operation run by the White Pass Community Services Coalition and the only public transit available to many residents east of Centralia and Chehalis would not be able to comply with new rules enacted by the Washington State Department of Transportation.
Under those new rules, proponents said, organizations receiving grant funding would need to increase their amount of local matching funds by 5 percent each biennium, all the way up to 50 percent.
When WSDOT first made their desire for a step-ladder increase for recurring grants and their matching funds, it definitely made things dicey for Lewis Mountain, Hayden said. He figured 15 percent would be doable, but barely, and 20 percent would force it to shut down. With that in mind Hayden, approached Twin Transit about taking over the East County routes early in 2017.
“Originally it was correct, but it wasn’t because we were going to lose funding,” Hayden said. “It was because we couldn’t afford to go after the same funding with the match increasing every time. But then nonprofits were exempted, but people went back to the same narrative. I just kind of held my breath sometimes when I was in the same room and (Twin Transit) people talked about what would be happening, because it didn’t seem to quite line up with what I was telling people. I’m not sure if people sensed that.”
Meanwhile, the state legislature added a line to its state transportation funding bill for 2017-19 that capped the required percentage of matching grant dollars for nonprofits at 10 percent.
Hayden told The Chronicle he expects LMHT to receive grant funding for at least the next biennium, if not the one after that as well. He’s asking for about $650,000 per biennium.
“Every time we’ve gotten an A-rating, we’ve been refunded,” Hayden said. “It’s not like we were going under. Our mission with Lewis Mountain was never to direct transportation service. Having it go countywide wasn’t something we were going to fight, because that was and still is our original goal.”
Don Chartock, Grants Manager for the public transportation division of WSDOT, said the agency sent out instructions and program guidelines to potential grant applicants sometime late in 2016 and that they included the proposed steps of 5 percent per biennium increase of matching funds required for recurring projects, up to 50 percent.
“It was more like the longer you went, the more skin you had to have in the game.” Chartock said. “What happened was a lot of rural systems, nonprofits and smaller systems were going to find that hard. Then the legislature added into their budget bill the language requiring us to not require more than 10 percent.”
Governor Jay Inslee signed the transportation budget bill on May 16, 2017. Hayden said he found out about the cap of 10 percent sometime shortly after that.
Jackson, who sits on the Twin Transit Advisory Board and helped lead the campaign in favor of the expansion initiative along with Wojcik-Damers, responded by claiming Hayden had told Twin Transit in 2017 that LMHT was paying 5 percent in matching funds and wouldn’t be able to afford the step increase to 10 percent.
In fact, LMHT paid 10 percent in matching funds in addition to its grant amount of $649,350 for the current biennium, which runs through June 30 of next year. It paid about 11 percent towards its award for the 2015-17 biennium and 6 percent for the 2013-15 biennium, according to contracts between LMHT and WSDOT.
A feasibility study completed by Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates in January 2018 does not reflect the change in legislation, and states that the local match for LMHT would increase by 5 percent each biennium until 2028, when it would be capped at $130,000.
Jackson also claimed while speaking to The Chronicle that Twin Transit representatives were correct to push the talking point that LMHT could not keep up with increased matching requirements, saying the legislature could always reverse course and increase them again.
He then asked why the Chronicle reporter was “fishing in a lake with no fish.”
In April, more than a year after the change in legislation capping LMHT’s match responsibility, the Lewis County Board of Commissioners organized a Lewis County public transit conference where elected representatives from every incorporated city except Napavine voted to recommend expanding the Lewis Public Transit Benefit Area.
The demise of LMHT was treated as imminent during both the conference and the county commissioners’ meeting in July in which the trio moved to place the issue on the November ballot.
Lewis County Commissioner Edna Fund said after a Centralia City Council meeting that she wasn’t aware of anyone at the county level that knew of false information being put forth related to Twin Transit expansion.
Commissioner Gary Stamper, whose district includes all of the eastern portion of the county, did not return a call seeking comment.
Hayden became emotional during the April event, at which he expressed his gratitude to those in attendance for their support and desire to preserve the transit service. He did not bring up the cap on nonprofit matching funds during his remarks. Hayden recalled being conflicted about what he should do or say.
“I’m sort of on this fence of well, I knew (Wojcik-Damers) knew the cap was in existence, but I never knew exactly what (Twin Transit) was telling people,” Hayden said. “I’d go home and talk to my wife about how maybe I was taking it too personally, but I knew they knew. There was no doubt in my mind.”
The rhetoric remained the same during the final months of the campaign as a political action committee was formed, staffed and funded by individuals and organizations from outside Lewis County.
A powerpoint presentation used by Jackson and Wojcik-Damers during fall campaign stops at senior centers and community meetings across the county said only that expansion would include replacing LMHT service on U.S. Route 12 and included nothing about grant funding or matching requirements.
The website lewiscountytransitmeasure.com published to promote the initiative states “WSDOT has announced that local match requirements for rural mobility grants, currently 10 percent, will be increasing in future years.”
Jackson and Wojcik-Damers both said they are not sure who paid for or designed the website. Wojcik-Damers added that when they spoke about the increase in matching requirements, it was “from a historical standpoint, this is what happened so people would understand where we got to today.”
In a Letter to the Editor published by The Chronicle on Oct. 5, Jackson wrote “LMHT operates off of grant funding only and has no such tax base, one reason they have found it necessary to shut down next year, because the match is more than they can afford.”
Twin Transit first began exploring the possibility of expanding its services to include all of Lewis County in March and April of 2017. The White Pass Community Services Coalition had announced that its public transit arm, LMHT, would need to cease operations in June 2019 due to increased matching funds requirements for consolidated grants distributed by WSDOT.
A story published by The Chronicle on April 4, 2017 quoted Rob LaFontaine, then the general manager of Twin Transit, as saying “Their match obligation is getting up high enough that without a tax base, they can’t keep going.”
Fewer than two weeks prior, on March 23, the first reading of substitute Senate Bill 5096 — the state transportation budget for the 2017-19 biennium — included a line that was not in the original document first read on Jan. 12: “The department shall not require more than a ten percent match from nonprofit transportation providers for state grants.”
Twin Transit officials knew no later than July 2017 that the local match requirement had been capped at 10 percent for nonprofits, according to Hayden, but continued on with the narrative that it was likely a do-or-die initiative when it came to LMHT.
Additionally, WSDOT published a paper in April of this year stating that projects applying for “sustaining operations” funds, which LMHT receives, could receive four years worth of funding instead of having to reapply at the end of each biennium, if its request for the second two-year cycle would not have increased by more than five percent.
Hayden asked for $651,350 in his 2019-2021 grant application and for $656,665 in 2021-2023. The nonprofit received $649,350 in sustaining funds for the current biennium, so it would be eligible to receive a conditional four-year award.
“It’s the same grant we’ve been operating on for the last 20 years,” Hayden said. “We’re good through June 30, 2019, irrespective of any future grants. If we get funded again, and we got an A-rating during the regional ranking process, it’ll either take us through June of 2021 or 2023.”
Hayden claims to have asked Wojcik-Damers during a meeting in Morton why Twin Transit was not telling people that the schedule for match increases was no longer an issue. After that, Hayden says he was kept out of the loop when it came to scheduling community meetings for citizens to learn about and ask questions regarding the ballot initiative.
Jackson and Wojcik-Damers deny such a meeting ever took place.
“I don’t know that (Wojcik-Damers) ever gave me a straight answer,” Hayden said. “Twin Transit and the board of county commissioners were very supportive when it was a real possibility we could go away, but then the matching rule changed. But nobody ever changed the narrative.”
Hayden says he fielded a number of calls from residents who wanted more information after attending presentations by Twin Transit representatives and that he tried to give them all the facts.
He demurred when asked whether he felt he had done enough to provide clarification to the public.
“Did I feel like I had to go talk to the commissioners?” Hayden said. “No, I didn’t. It was all kind of up there and out there, but I was not happy. I didn’t think what they were doing was appropriate.”
Twin Transit still has plans to build a transit center in downtown Centralia that would include a dozen bus bays costing as much as $9 million, depending on whether federal or state grants are used to help fund construction.
The potential for some of those bays to be used by routes serving the current LMHT service was a selling point used by Wojcik-Damers in a presentation last month to the Chehalis City Council.
Taylor contacted Wojcik-Damers, Jackson and Staebler as well as members of Centralia and Chehalis city governments to request a special meeting after he was informed of the inaccurate information used during the expansion campaign. Staebler requested during the Centralia council meeting Tuesday that a workshop with Twin Transit and city representatives be arranged for sometime early next year.
“I’ve been asked a lot of questions I don’t know the answer to and I need to educate myself,” Taylor said. “I’m being asked about the failed sales tax initiative, I’m being asked about the new building that’s proposed and honestly, aside from the cost-financial numbers that Derrick has given, I don’t know a lot about it. The more questions people ask, in order to continue moving forward with this, I guess I need to reaffirm this is the right way to go.”
The Chronicle obtained Jackson’s emailed response to Twin Transit and city representatives, on which he copied Lewis County deputy prosecutor Ross Petersen and Chehalis attorney Janean Parker. In the email, he said Taylor he could ask his questions at the next regularly scheduled board meeting on Dec. 18.
Bringing up business of the agency, such as the roles of board members, in an email including a voting majority is likely a violation of the state Open Public Meetings Act because conversations between two of three board members constitutes a quorum, according to Toby Nixon, president of the Washington Coalition for Open Government.
Taylor requesting a special meeting and outlining his reasons for asking would not likely be deemed an OPMA infraction, Nixon said.
Hayden still hopes that conversations about a countywide transit system will continue to progress, though he’s not sure where the discussion goes from here.
“My thought during the campaign was if you’re telling people one thing and they find out it’s absolutely not true, you’re going to be in trouble,” Hayden said. “People are smart enough to listen to the facts and understand why a change needs to be made. It wouldn’t have meant anyone was not going to support countywide transit or our services melded together. But now, oh boy.”
