During this morning's transportation committee meeting, committee chair (and mayoral candidate) Jan Drago took on transportation department director Grace Crunican in a weird and unusually testy exchange over Crunican's handling of three reports by a consultant on allegations of discrimination within her department.

Watching the exchange (which starts around the 38-minute mark here ) was like sitting through a dramatic reading of a bad play about a city council meeting. Literally. It began with Drago reading from a list of questions sent to Crunican earlier this month. Crunican and assistant city attorney Paul Olsen, apparently there to provide backup, responded to Drago's questions by reading stiffly from a copy of the same document.

The upshot of the scripted Q&A session: Crunican revealed no new information about the investigations, which took place starting in 2005, and Drago, who's running against Mayor Greg Nickels, got another chance to take potshots at her opponent's transportation director.

Drago skipped out on today's Seattle Times' editorial board mayoral endorsement meeting to grill Crunican this morning.