Tribal Liaison; TPS

The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) is a multimodal agency with a global reputation for excellence. Our dedicated workforce plans, designs, builds, and operates an integrated transportation system that safely and efficiently moves people and goods throughout the state. In addition to maintaining over 20,000 lane miles of state highway and 4,100 bridges, WSDOT leads an award-winning Active Transportation Plan, manages the world's longest floating bridge, and operates the largest ferry system in the nation!

WSDOT is currently seeking a Transportation Planning Specialist 4 to serve as the Tribal Liaison for all tribal concerns, acting as the primary point of contact between WSDOT and the federally recognized Tribes within the Eastern, North Central, and South Central regions. The Tribal Liaison ensures compliance with applicable laws, policies, and directives, including the National Historic Preservation Act, Executive Order 21-02, and the Centennial Accord, and advances WSDOT’s commitments to equity, diversity, inclusion, and environmental stewardship.

This role is pivotal in fostering and maintaining meaningful government-to-government relationships, ensuring that Tribal sovereignty, interests, and perspectives are fully integrated into transportation planning, project development, construction, and maintenance activities.

Among the varied range of responsibilities held within this role, you will:

• Serve as the primary lead for Tribal transportation and transit topics, establishing, cultivating, and maintaining strong, respectful, positive, and effective government-to-government communications and relationships.
• Assist with tribal consultations related to the Health Environment for All (HEAL) Act compliance.
• Develop, implement, and maintain tribal coordination procedures and protocols for represented regions and facilitate and document tribal consultation in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA), Section 106, and Executive Order 21-02.
• Provide expert advice and mentoring across all disciplines, engaging with tribal governments or working on projects and maintenance activities with tribal implications needing tribal consultation processes.
• Oversee the facilitation and coordination of tribal input into represented regions’ activities, plans, studies, procedures, timetables, and projects.
• Support multimodal transportation planning efforts by participating in coordination with tribal governments, metropolitan planning organizations (MPO), regional transportation planning organizations (RTPO), local agencies, and WSDOT program staff to advance integrated transportation planning outcomes.
• Lead technical planning efforts, working groups, site visits, and data collection activities as assigned.
• Support the development of innovative planning approaches by identifying emerging practices and contributing to process improvements within assigned planning efforts.

To be considered for this opportunity, the following competencies are required:

• Communication, Facilitation, & Public Engagement:
  • Demonstrated ability to communicate complex transportation, environmental, regulatory, policy information clearly effectively to technical & non-technical audiences. clearly and effectively to technical and non-technical audiences.
  • Demonstrated ability to facilitate meetings, consultations, workshops, and discussions involving diverse stakeholders and perspectives.
  • Demonstrated ability to develop professional written materials including reports, briefing documents, consultation records, presentations, correspondence, and recommendations.
  • Demonstrated ability to represent the agency professionally when working with tribal governments, elected officials, partner agencies, community members & other stakeholders.
• Leadership:
  • Demonstrated ability to provide leadership, guidance, and technical direction to interdisciplinary teams & partners in support of complex transportation planning or programs activities.
  • Demonstrated ability to mentor & support staff regarding consultation practices, community engagement, & equitable transportation planning.
  • Experience developing policies, procedures, training materials, guidance documents, or best practices.
• Transportation Planning & Program Coordination:
  • Demonstrated competency in applying multi modal transportation planning principles, community engagement practices, and intergovernmental…