The Los Angeles Times continues to plumb former SeaTac Airport Director Gina Marie Lindsey's past to gain insight into the allegations that she improperly steered $66.5 million worth of contracts to two preferred companies in her current job as head of LAX and three other LA airports.

The Los Angeles City Council and the city controller's office are reviewing whether Lindsey gave the contracts to favored firms after airport review panels first recommended other companies for the job. On Tuesday, the council asserted jurisdiction over one of the contracts, giving it the power to recommend that the agreement be approved or rejected.

Lindsey demurred when asked about the Washington state audit of the Port of Seattle's procurement and construction management which discovered similar and much more egregious abuses of power which violated state law and port policy, some of which occurred on her watch, which ended in 2004. The audit has spurred a federal criminal investigation.

Lindsey, who was appointed the executive director of Los Angeles World Airports in May, on Tuesday defended her 11-year stint as Seattle's aviation director, saying the port agency had wide discretion on contracts and the agreements in question were either approved by the port commission or her boss, the chief executive of the port.

"If there was something I had done outside my authority, I would have been contacted as part of the audit. No one has ever contacted me," said Lindsey, who directed the renovation of the Seattle airport. "No one has done a major program without doing things that can't be improved upon. There are things that can be learned from the audit."

But Lindsey said that she has been gone so long from Seattle that she was no longer "competent or able to address the details of the audit."

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Mindy Chambers, a spokeswoman for the Washington state auditor, said Lindsey and port officials are not specifically named in the audit and that the day-to-day contracting work was often delegated to lower-level contract supervisors.

But she said that Lindsey would have had some responsibility over procurements and knowledge of contracts awarded by her division.

Most of the L.A. port commissioners, who like Lindsey are appointed by L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, said they were satisfied with her denial of any impropriety at LAX. Lindsey said the review panel wanted more information about the bidders and requested a second review which reversed one of their endorsements.