The complicated business of switching boats around when there's a breakdown and finding fill-in deck workers to cover for sick or late employees all takes place in the State Ferries Dispatch Center, located in downtown Seattle.

For the last two years, Captain Pete Williams has been in charge of dispatch.

Williams has a reputation of being grouchy, but frugal; a manager known for finding ways to limit overtime and costly perks for employees, in order to save the ferry system a buck. His tactics appear to work. This year, the Dispatch Center is on track to save more than a half-million dollars in overtime, compared to last year.

The Secretary of the Washington State Department of Transportation, Paula Hammond, called Pete Williams a model money-saving manager.

"You have to look for ways to cut costs in the system. That's their job and Pete Williams is very good at that, no question," she said.

For the past three months the KING 5 Investigators have exposed millions of dollars of waste at the state’s ferry system, the largest ferry system in the country. The revelation that multi-million-dollar perks were being collected for years by a select group of ferry employees and instances of other workers cashing in on massive amounts of unregulated overtime every year was particularly difficult for taxpayers to swallow given the dire financial straits of State Ferries and the state’s financially poor economic health in general.

As KING 5 rolled out one story after another, transportation leaders promised reform and a commitment to cutting costs wherever possible.

"What we will look for is every opportunity (to save) because we’ve got to make the system more financially sustainable," said the Director of Ferries, David Moseley last month.

But exactly during this time, a strange thing happened to Capt. Pete Williams, the outspoken advocate of saving the ferry system money. Last month Secretary Hammond quietly took away one of Williams’ key responsibilities: representing the state at the bargaining table during union negotiations for the past six years.

The union for the captains and mates – the MMP - complained Williams ......
http://www.nwcn.com/news/Investigators-B...n-96633194.html