On the S*** List

We all have asides and snarky comments — Lord knows the meeting mavens have more than our fair share.

And we know Washington Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond is also a lady with a sharp wit… and apparently even sharper electronic pen, putting someone who criticized the Columbia River Crossing on her (rhymes with bit) list.

We know this thanks to a public records request by CRC critic Kevin Peterson, who has advocated for a different, collector-distributor style interchanges on the new bridge.

In an email responding to one from Peterson on Aug. 24, 2011, former Bridge Review Panel chairman Tom Warne criticized what he sees as a high number of interchanges (seven) in the project’s length (five miles). He also cc’d CRC Director Nancy Boyd, among others.

Boyd forwarded it to Hammond, with a note of, “head’s up.”

On Aug. 25, 2011, Hammond forwarded Warne’s email to WSDOT Deputy Secretary David Dye: “Here’s Tom being ‘helpful’ again. He’s now permanently on my s*** list. :)”

When Peterson found that email in his records request, he said he was pretty shocked.

“Tom is an outstanding man who cares about the future and is very distinguished nationally,” he wrote in an email last month. “If Paula thinks this highly of Tom then I can only imagine what she thinks of me!”

As for Tom Warne, he cites the smiley face — and a later convo that he and Hammond had — as making his inclusion on her “list” as no big deal.

“I am aware of the email that you cite,” he wrote me on April 25. “Paula and I have known each other for many years and I have come to respect her tenacity and commitment to transportation in her state. If you know her as I do then you aren’t surprised by the wry humor she expressed in her email and the smiley face. She and I have communicated about the email and we have no issues or misunderstandings about it.”

So there you have it: 🙂