$800,000 to fix Seattle street department

Dysfunction at the city's transportation department will cost taxpayers at least $805,000 in consultants, investigations and payouts to employees, but the mayor's office said Wednesday that the money will be well spent if it improves the department's performance.

On top of $515,000 already spent investigating the street-maintenance division, the city expects to shell out $150,000-plus for consultants to tell the department how to improve its daily operations and better respond to future snowstorms.

Problems in the division already have cost the city $140,000 to resolve employee claims of discrimination, retaliation or harassment. Three more claims are pending, according to city officials and documents released last week by the mayor's office.

At a City Council hearing Wednesday, Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis defended the money spent on the half-million-dollar investigation. He said it was comparable in cost to other, similar internal investigations, but larger in scope.

Ceis continued to defend Grace Crunican, chief of the transportation department, and said that he would meet with her every two weeks to ensure that issues of discrimination and favoritism outlined in the report are dealt with.

"She has been responsive to the issue and did what a good manager should have done," Ceis told the council's Civil Rights, Health and Personnel Committee.

But Councilmember Tom Rasmussen questioned Crunican's analysis of the department's problems and whether she had done enough to change its workplace culture during her seven years at the helm.

Crunican has repeatedly said that longtime employees' "resistance to change" accounted for many of the division's problems. She said she promoted strong managers such as Paul Jackson Jr. to crack down on lax worker practices. The investigation said he was "viewed as unsafe, dictatorial, vindictive, unwilling to listen even ... by credible, well respected witnesses."

"I'm wondering whether resistance to change is justification for ineffective or poor management style," Rasmussen said. He asked whether seven years was sufficient to improve the division's work environment, and asked whether effective management equated with aggressive, terse, abrupt, rude behavior.

Crunican did not answer his question.

Jackson presided over the city's botched snowstorm response, which left the city paralyzed for nearly two weeks in late December. Jackson was promoted to street-maintenance director last year even after the workplace investigation had found serious problems with his management style.

Last week, Jackson requested a transfer, and he is now working in the city's traffic-management division. Crunican said no decision has been made on whether to reduce his $108,000-a-year salary.

Julie Nelson, director of the city's Office for Civil Rights, told the council committee that the department will receive more civil-rights training. She said the department already has improved its handling of workplace complaints.

Last May, Nelson expressed concern about the cases in a memo to Crunican, saying that the department was not responding quickly enough to the claims and that the office had discovered "serious challenges between staff and management."

Crunican said the claims stemmed from increased sensitivity among employees who attended training on racial and social-justice issues through the department, and longtime employees who didn't want to change their ways. But she also acknowledged that favoritism contributed to problems.

She said the department has instituted systems to ensure that decisions related to hiring and promotion are made on the basis of qualifications, not favoritism.

Susan Kelleher: 206-464-2508 or skelleher@seattletimes.com