Christopher Dunagan, in his Kitsap Sun “Watching Our Water Ways” blog:
It was at the end of March last year that the Legislature shifted the burden of paying for a tugboat at Neah Bay to the shipping industry, and the governor signed the bill into law.
At the time, it seemed to me that it would be much easier said than done for various shippers to allocate the cost among themselves. Industry representatives agreed that negotiations would be difficult, as I reported in a Kitsap Sun story last March 31.
The Legislature had looked at a cost-allocation system but decided to allow the industry to work it out themselves. Progress reports were required by Oct. 31 and Dec. 1.
And this is where I may have misunderstood the Legislature’s intent. I thought the idea was that if the shippers failed to put a system in place by the end of last year, then the Legislature would come back and do something this year to ensure no disruption in tug service. By then, the industry would have little room to complain. But that’s not what is happening.
