The Port of Seattle wishes to point out that it did not spend public money last year on a crucial staff seminar called “How to Clean Your Messy Desk.” Ditto for the staff session on “How to Improve Your Grammar.”

“It’s important to note that none of these expenses were paid for by taxpayers,” says a Port spokesman. Rather, they were paid for with revenue from the Port’s business operations. In other words, money that the Port gets from the taxpayers ($35 million via an annual tax levy) is entirely separate from money the Port makes off the taxpayers’ facilities ($243 million last year).

Port officials like to insist on this dubious distinction—especially when their unchecked and often weird government spending practices are questioned. It’s similar to the creative financial distinctions that turned the $134 million Bell Street Pier project (double the planned price tag) into another Port victory: Though the taxpayers’ pier will lose millions, private investors feeding off the project will make a bundle (see “Terminal Cruise?” SW, 3/18).

The oddball seminars, as well as one executive’s extraordinary expenses described below, are just the latest acts from the Port’s long-running “near-felonious financial farce,” as veteran Port watchdog Benella Caminiti refers to it. And it shows no signs of ending. “As long as the public re-elects the same [Port Commission] members,” she says, “the public deserves to be swindled.”

According to current and former Port workers and public documents, seminars are a regular feature of the Port’s be-happy spending mission. Some “employees are required to attend at least 10 of these types of classes a year at the Port’s expense,” says a former office worker who handled seminar billings.

The seminars are given by the American Management Association, Fred Pryor Seminars, and SkillPath Seminars, among others, the former employee says. “These companies deluge the Port on a weekly basis with pamphlets about their course offerings, which cost a minimum of $99-$149 each and sometimes go as high as $300.”

A current employee who recalls the clean-desk seminar says it was exactly that: “They told you how to maintain a cleaner desk, by removing things from it. Really. This was considered a sign of efficiency. To me, it was a sign of someone spending time cleaning their desk.”

The Port engineering department comes in for special mention. Records show dozens of department employees last year attended seminars and training sessions not only in Seattle but around the US at a cost of $54,000 in tuition, travel, and hotel/meal expenses. They include the “Asphalt Institute Seminar” in Phoenix, the “High Performance Work Teams Conference” in Orlando, and the “7 Effective Habits of Good Learning” seminar at the Paramount Theater in Seattle.

“As far as the Port is concerned,” says spokesman Imbert Matthee, “these expenses were all legitimate costs incurred by engineering services in pursuit of its business operations.”

That would include, he adds, the $700 one-night tab in Paris run up by the head of the engineering department, Ray Rawe.

Says the former employee who handled billings: Rawe “went to Amsterdam and Paris [last fall] to review the port and airport operations there. I personally did his expense claim and there was an evening in Paris where his hotel bill was $700.”

We tried to reach Rawe last week. Unfortunately, he was “traveling,” a receptionist said. A department spokeswoman confirmed Rawe was gone to a “convention-seminar combination” for five days.

Rawe also sent his Port-supplied automobile back to the garage “because he wanted tinted windows put in,” according to the former Port billings worker. “Thinking about that request on my 10-block walk to the bus stop just about broke my heart.”

Spokesman Matthee denies there was such a request, saying the only similar expenditure he could find was a bill for replacement of a rear window on a Chevrolet Blazer used at construction sites, where “dangerous terrain” is involved. “The rear window was replaced and equipped with a defogging device, washer, and wiper because it regularly fogged up, and drivers found it impossible to back the vehicle up in cold or wet weather,” he said. That little improvement cost the Port $2,869.

Matthee reiterated that new windows—tinted or not—aren’t billed to the taxpayers anyway, they’re paid for from that magical pot of Port revenues. And, he adds, “none” of the seminar, travel, or vehicle items we questioned “seems unusual.”

Maybe that’s the problem. “There is no accountability to the public,” complains the former Port employee. “Take a serious look at where the money is going and I think you’ll find they owe the citizens of King County an enormous refund.”