Office of Governor Gary Locke
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - May 7, 2003
Contact:  Anna Kim-Williams, Governor’s Communications Office, 360-902-4136

Gov. Gary Locke to Award 27 State Employees for Government Efficiency

Gov. Gary Locke today presented the Governor’s Distinguished Management Leadership Award to 14 state employees who demonstrated outstanding management excellence this past year. Locke also recognized an additional 13 managers with the Sustaining Leadership Award for their outstanding leadership.

“In state government, we face an ever-growing demand to efficiently deliver services to the public with diminishing resources,” Locke said. “Each year, creative and dedicated state employees rise to the occasion and work hard to meet that challenge. I commend and thank these dedicated individuals for their tireless efforts to make a positive difference in the lives of the people of Washington.”

Established in 1985, both honors recognize state government managers for their leadership, customer and market focus, information and analysis, human resource development and management, process management and business results. This year’s recipients were:

DISTINGUISHED MANAGERS’ AWARDS

Mark Andrews, Department of Natural Resources
Andrews achieved significant results in the seamless transition of a reduction in force for the agency, minimizing the impact on agency business operations, mitigating the impact on employees who were directly and indirectly effected and maximizing the internal placement of displaced employees.

Peggy Brown, Department of Social and Health Services
Brown worked with the Office of the Attorney General to bring a class-action lawsuit before the U.S. Supreme Court to protect the benefits for children in foster care. She also managed to secure a significant increase in federal funding - approximately $10 million per year.

Bruce Crawford, Interagency Committee on Outdoor Recreation
Crawford managed the Watershed Health and Salmon Recovery Monitoring Project, which provided the governor and legislators with a plan prioritizing more than 60 monitoring efforts in state agencies and help ensure future funding is spent on the highest priorities.

Barbara Culley, Department of Veterans Affairs
Culley played a key role in the development of a new, $47.3 million, 240-bed skilled nursing facility to replace the existing Veterans Home on the Retsil campus. The plan was selected by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as the top project in the nation.

Roosevelt Currie, Office of Administrative Hearings
Currie developed a production system streamlining the processing of unemployment insurance appeals. This resulted in increased timeliness and reduction of backlogs and no increase in permanent support staff, even while the volume of new unemployment appeals skyrocketed.

Judy Devine, Department of Social and Health Services
Devine played a key role in developing a cohesive organization within the agency, producing greater results and stability through increased communication, teamwork and performance. She was also instrumental in identifying the cost/benefit for department projects to the state to stay on time and budget.

Larry Dzieza, Department of Licensing
Dzieza helped launch many recent successful agency projects, improving work processes, reducing wait times in field offices, streamlining budget and information requests, and increasing efficiencies through technology.

Fred Fakkema, Washington State Patrol
Through Fakkema’s leadership, core enforcement activities increased significantly, while enhancement of key infrastructure was undertaken. This resulted in the Commercial Vehicle Division receiving national recognition as one of the premier commercial vehicle enforcement agencies in the country.

Kelly Honeychurch, Department of Labor and Industries
Honeychurch developed and implemented a system to manage and measure results, resulting in an increase in audits completed and incoming revenue. She also played a key role in statewide outreach efforts with the building industry.

Kathy Ramoska, Employment Security Department
Ramoska’s hard work has resulted in vast anti-fraud efforts in the Unemployment Insurance Division, detecting and preventing improper payments of $20 million in 2002 and $3 million to date in 2003.

Victoria Roberts, Department of Corrections
Roberts has collaboratively worked with the departments of Corrections and Social and Health Services for federal funding to enhance Corrections’ supervision of sex offenders. She also was instrumental in other several measures that have saved the department and the state valuable resources.

Joe Stohr, Department of Ecology
As a new manager, Stohr met extremely high internal and external expectations for quick results in reducing the application backlog for new funding and staff. He also tailored a department reorganization to target work geographically to areas.

Mary Welsh, Department of Revenue
Welsh helped to develop a fiscal note process and built a first-of-its-kind prototype system that provides accurate local codes and tax rates for any address in the state. These projects earned the department recognition in Governing Magazine.

Glen Woodbury, Military Department
Through his effective and comprehensive management approach, Woodbury has helped improve the state’s coordination efforts and resources with a number of diverse emergency management organizations beyond local and state agencies.


SUSTAINING LEADERSHIP AWARDS

Stuart Clark, Department of Ecology
Leon Curtis, Department of Social and Health Services
Harold (Fred) DeBolt, Department of Transportation
Gregg Grunenfelder, Department of Health
Billie Hartline, Department of Social and Health Services
Claire Hesselholt, Department of Revenue
Bob Lanouette, Department of Labor and Industries
Bill Moore, General Administration
Wolf Opitz, Office of Financial Management
Dan Pacholke, Department of Corrections
Evelyn Rodriguez, Employment Security Department
Dana Steele, Department of Labor and Industries
Dwight Wood, Employment Security Department

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