SEQUIM — Kevin Van De Wege, the Democrat who hopes to unseat Republican Jim Buck from the state House of Representatives, on Tuesday called the state performance audit of the Hood Canal Bridge graving yard “extremely disappointing.”‘
“It didn’t seem to really answer the questions,” he said.
“It just didn’t seem to really audit [the state Department of Transportation’s handling of the project].
“It seemed to tell some of the story, but it even left the end part of that out.”
The audit, released June 2, follows the graving yard debacle from its inception through an archaeological firm’s failure to find an ancestral Native American cemetery that lay below the yard. It does not examine the months that followed and only briefly studies Transportation’s decision to terminate the project.
Van De Wege, 31, is a Clallam County Fire District No. 3 firefighter-paramedic who has remounted the challenge he made to Buck two years ago.
Buck bested him by a 51 percent to 49 percent margin in 2004. Buck’s 24th District includes Clallam and Jefferson counties and part of Grays Harbor County.
As for the graving yard, Van De Wege also said, “I would have liked to see Doug MacDonald fired.”
