Here Comes Pat!

It's fitting that in squeaky-clean Seattle, the most disreputable elected official is a part-time public servant, former citizen activist, and 72-year-old grandmother.

But don't underestimate her impact. Working a mere 20 hours a week, and collecting just $16,800 a year in salary and per diem, Port of Seattle Commissioner Pat Davis has managed to amass an unrivaled record of bungling, back-dealing, and questionable behavior.

The job of commissioner, ostensibly, is to be the public's eyes and ears at the Port, which employs 1,800 people, generates $12 billion in related business regionwide, and this year will collect nearly $80 million in property taxes from King County residents.

But for Davis, closed doors and a rubber stamp appear to have been the preferred tools of the trade. She's been especially accommodating over the years to former Port CEO Mic Dinsmore, whose policies she regularly supported and for whom she tried to supply a highly generous retirement package. (The plan was abandoned last year when it became public.)

The retirement flap was just one in a series of recent Port scandals, from sexually explicit e-mails traded among Port cops to no-bid contracts handed out at the airport. In the wake of a scathing state audit in January, the Port's activities under Dinsmore are now being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice for potential criminal wrongdoing.

Habitually uncontrite, Davis has presided over it all. She also had a hand in Seattle's biggest black eye, the 1999 World Trade Organization meeting that left the city smoldering. Those who've worked with her puzzle over whether she's conniving or clueless, but Davis has proved to be a cunning politician, building the alliances and securing the backers she's needed to survive. Indeed, she's held her job longer than almost any local pol currently in office.

But Davis may finally be getting ready to hang up her rubber stamp. Most Port observers think she won't bother seeking re-election next year. (Davis declined to speak to the Weekly.)

But that's not good enough for at least one local activist. Chris Clifford has made it his mission to give Davis the boot, but he first needs permission from the state to get a recall vote on the ballot, and Davis has fought the effort all the way to the state Supreme Court. If Clifford wins, he'll have six months to collect approximately 150,000 signatures. If he loses, the controversial commissioner will get to depart into the sunset, like a jet lazily lifting off from Sea-Tac's pricey new third runway.

Long before she got caught stitching outgoing chief executive Dinsmore that golden parachute, Davis was a member of the League of Women Voters and the leader of a citizen group called Port Watch. She was also an outspoken advocate for increasing public scrutiny of the Port, and for protecting Seattle's shoreline for marine-dependent uses. Davis, the daughter of a Wenatchee apple rancher and a school teacher, who raised her three children in Seattle, was a good fit for what is largely a group of amateur public officials. Married to an associate professor of pediatric dentistry at the University of Washington, she spent decades managing the books for her husband's part-time private practice while volunteering on the boards of organizations like the Seattle-King County Economic Development Council, the Trade Development Alliance, and the International Women's Conference.

In 1985, she became the first woman elected to the Port Commission. It wasn't long before she became commission president, overseeing a quasi-governmental agency that controls Sea-Tac Airport, the giant container facilities along Elliott Bay, and numerous other swaths of the Seattle waterfront.

It also wasn't long before Davis, the reformer, became something else—a cheerleader for the wishes of Port tenants, real estate developers, and the Port chief executive. At the behest of Dinsmore, she helped pass the policy at the root of the practices that have come under scrutiny by a recent state audit, which found millions of dollars in sloppy Port spending on everything from credit cards to no-bid construction contracts.

Normandy Park resident Helen Kludt, who has long opposed Sea-Tac expansion efforts, and who held a fund-raiser at her home for Davis when the candidate first ran for office, still marvels at the transformation. "She was an entirely different Pat Davis than she is today," Kludt says. "It seemed like after she got into office, there was a flip-flop. She just went along with the big boys."

Davis' days as a yes-woman, and the Port Commission's abdication of its oversight role, began together with the quiet passage of something called Resolution 3181. The change was pitched in 1994, two years after Dinsmore took control and a time when the Port, in its quest to help Seattle's waterfront become more "world-class," was getting more involved in real estate development. The idea was to allow Port staff—about 20 policy analysts and operations personnel—and the chief executive to bypass commission approval for everything from property transactions, capital projects, and lease agreements to work contracts and use of idle Port funds.

The resolution was approved unanimously and without debate by the commission while Davis was its president, according to meeting minutes. It essentially gave Dinsmore free reign to do what he wanted with Port projects, as long as they cost less than $200,000.