I take exception to The News Tribune puff piece on Rep. Norm Dicks (editorial, 2-12). You refused to report the facts in your editorial to curry favor with the 35-year incumbent.
K&L Gates law firm, Dicks’ fourth-largest political contributor, was represented on the Puget Sound Partnership Board, which hired David Dicks as executive director. David Dicks then falsified the urgency of a service contract so as to bypass the work being done by the attorney general’s office.
David Dicks priced the contract at $19,999 so as to bypass the mandatory public bidding process. When it was obvious that would be skirting the rules, he lowered it a little. Then he issued it as a sole-source contract to K&L Gates at an hourly rate up to $478. The contract exploded to more than $50,000, and the deadline slipped twice. So much for urgency.
Do you not see the conflict of interest? What about David Dicks sending $10,000 of taxpayer money to the Cascade Conservancy where brother Ryan was working? You think it’s a coincidence?
Norm Dicks has not had a town hall meeting in Grays Harbor County in more than eight years. He has helped destroy the Olympic Peninsula logging industry. He helped tear down the Elwha Dam, which conservatively had generated more than $350 million in electricity since its construction.
He has foisted inefficiency upon America’s energy production, while mandating the corrosive solvent ethanol into our fuel supply. The U.S. debt was less than $1 trillion when he took office’; now it’s $15 trillion.
