Transit Leaders Play Blame Game Over Initiative Misinformation

Posted

One member of the Twin Transit Advisory Board appears to have changed his tune regarding misinformation circulated as part of the failed ballot initiative to expand Twin Transit and the Lewis Public Transit Benefit Area, less than a week after a report in The Chronicle detailed incorrect information contained within campaign materials, some of which are now under review by the state Public Disclosure Commission.

Lewis County Commissioner Bobby Jackson read from a prepared statement at the end of the Board of County Commissioners meeting Monday morning, stating his embarrassment at the situation and placing much of the blame on Lewis Mountain Highway Transit manager Doug Hayden.

During the campaign, Jackson and Twin Transit General Manager Derrick Wojcik-Damers said Lewis Mountain Highway Transit was in imminent danger of closing, due to an increasing required contribution to their grants. 

Jackson, who sits on the Twin Transit Advisory Board, categorically denied that he, other county commissioners and the Twin Transit administration had knowledge of a 10 percent cap placed in the spring of 2017 on local matching requirements for nonprofits receiving grant funds from the Washington State Department of Transportation. 

Jackson said if Twin Transit had known before a transportation benefit conference held in April of this year that the matching requirement was capped and LMHT would not be going out of business because of those increases, it may have dropped the initiative effort completely until more information became available.

“While I am saddened the measure failed at the ballot box, I’m even more saddened that, had it passed, we might be having a completely different conversation because of the failed actions of Lewis Mountain Highway Transit,” Jackson concluded. 

He did not respond to requests for further comment.

Last week, he insisted he and Wojcik-Damers had done nothing wrong. Wojcik-Damers said Monday evening that he had not seen or read Jackson’s statement, but that he concurred with his line on Hayden and Lewis Mountain Highway Transit.



“I do think there is a responsibility to notify us right away, so that we’re made aware of what they’re going to do,” Wojcik-Damers said. “We don’t have access to their books, we’re not part of their business, we don’t know if they’re changing something.”

Prior to the state legislature inserting a line into the 2017-19 state transportation funding bill codifying the cap, WSDOT had planned to institute a 5 percent increase of required matching funds for each biennium a recurring grant request was funded.

The campaign, which featured informational presentations by Jackson and Wojcik-Damers, stated the impending closure of LMHT due to the long-removed match increase as a key reason for the initiative.

Jackson cited a February 2017 Twin Transit board meeting, during which Hayden said the nonprofit bus service would fold in June 2019, as the last time he and Twin Transit officials had heard from LMHT during a Twin Transit advisory board meeting. Language instituting the 10 percent cap on matching funds was not introduced in the budget legislation until the following month. 

Hayden did not take kindly to Jackson’s statement, stating “I’m sorry that Bobby Jackson feels like he needs to find an excuse for the failed vote.” 

He went on to say he couldn’t understand why he was being targeted when he wasn’t involved in the campaign, which included a website and fliers that he says he had no input in.

“If they want someone to blame, let them blame someone who has kept a bus service running for 20 years in East Lewis County when Twin Transit has never contributed a dime of assistance to our service,” Hayden said. “The county never provided assistance to us, even when we asked them for a match, they couldn’t come up with one. It goes to a vote and it fails, and they’re blaming us. I don’t quite understand that one, but we’re out in the east end, maybe they feel safe blaming someone out here.”