Voting woes from 2004 put speed bump in campaign trail for Sims

King County Executive Ron Sims wanted answers when he found out his elections office had failed to count 735 valid absentee ballots in last year's agonizingly close governor's election.

Among the uncounted was that of Sims' friend, County Council Chairman Larry Phillips.

"I said, 'Enough is enough. How does somebody set aside that large a number of ballots, and why weren't procedures followed?' " Sims recalls saying.

But it took another eight months to determine exactly what went wrong and who should be disciplined. During that time, Sims' office was bombarded by revelations of election mismanagement, illegal votes counted, legal votes left uncounted, poor accounting for ballots and shoddy security procedures. Sims' credibility with some voters was further eroded as he stood by Elections Director Dean Logan.

Now, as Sims, a Democrat, runs for a third, full four-year term as county executive, his handling of the election crisis is a defining issue in his management of the state's largest county, a $3.4 billion enterprise with 13,000 employees.

His Republican opponent, County Councilman David Irons, reminds voters at every opportunity of the turmoil in the Elections Section, and says he would do a better job of managing the county's vast bureaucracy.

Before the governor's election, this wasn't expected to be much of a race. But the election foul-ups, a bungled $38 million computer project and Sims' controversial restrictions on rural development have taken their toll.

Ron Sims, 57


Residence: Seattle

Occupation: King County executive

Personal: Married, three sons

Background: Was a County Council member when appointed in 1996 to fill the county executive's post vacated by Gary Locke when he was elected governor. Decisive re-election victories in 1997 and 2001, but lost campaigns for governor and U.S. Senate.

Top three endorsements: King County Labor Council, Washington Conservation Voters, Affordable Housing Council

Campaign Web site: www.ronsims.com

Sims, a charismatic campaigner, was elected by wide margins in his first two runs for county executive and, in pulling the county through hard economic times, seemed to have a strong record to run on.

Sims streamlined government by reducing the number of departments and middle managers, slowed the rise in employee health-care costs, and maintained essential services in the face of a $137 million budget shortfall.

"I transformed the government," he says.

But the election problems have drawn more attention.

"The 2004 election was a disaster. You can't defend the indefensible, and yet Ron went out and tried to do that," said Snohomish County Council Chief of Staff John Chelminiak, a Republican, who was King County Council chief of staff in the 1980s.

Sims believes he's gotten a bad rap. He says he and Assistant Executive Sheryl Whitney worked quietly with Logan to develop safeguards to prevent a repeat of problems that occurred in the 2004 election.

"I don't have to nuke an issue in order to get change. That's old-fashioned management," Sims said. "Some people think we acted too slow. I think we acted with a sane, pragmatic approach."

Sims said his one regret on elections is that he didn't recognize sooner the "cultural problems" that prevented employees from reporting that absentee-ballot supervisor Nicole Way had allegedly disregarded orders on how to handle ballots, like Phillips', which were only counted in a second recount.

Logan has taken steps to fire Way and, at Sims' direction, has demoted Elections Superintendent Bill Huennekens.

Irons contends Logan should be fired, and elections turned over to an elected auditor.

Sims now declines to offer an opinion on Logan's performance or his future, saying that's the job of a "turnaround team" being hired to reorganize the Elections Section.

In contrast to his election woes, Sims has won praise for keeping the county in solid financial condition in the face of rising costs and falling revenues.

When there wasn't enough money to keep parks and pools operating, he followed the advice of a task force that he turn over local parks to the cities in which they were located. He then won voter approval for a levy to maintain the county's regional parks.

When tax revenues dropped because of the recession and voter-approved tax limits, Sims created the Budget Advisory Task Force to find solutions, and slashed $137 million from the general fund over four years.

He also launched a campaign to bring back long-term financial stability by promoting annexation or incorporation of urban areas where the county is spending more to provide services than it's receiving in taxes.

Sims' response to the recommendations impressed budget task force co-chair Bob Wallace, a Bellevue real-estate developer and a Republican.

"He's done an outstanding job of managing the county under very adverse conditions," Wallace said. "You've got to recognize that Democrats generally get elected by giving money away, especially to their constituents, labor unions, environmentalists, et cetera.

"While Ron has been in office, it's been tough economic times. He's had to whack $50 million a biennium out of his budget. He's managed to do it. It's one thing for a Republican to do that, it's quite another for a Democrat to do that."

Wallace is not endorsing a candidate in the executive race.

Budget panel co-chairman John Warner, retired Boeing chief administrative officer, was equally effusive. "What I look for in a good manager," he said, "is somebody who is a good leader, who is a visionary and also who is a great listener and who delegates well. I observed all these things in him."

The financial crisis also required reining in the cost of locking up growing numbers of juvenile and adult criminals. County Council staffers calculated that criminal-justice cost increases, if left unchecked, would soon take up the entire general fund, leaving no money to operate county computers or run elections.

Working with judges, prosecutors, the sheriff and the County Council, Sims found ways of reversing the rapid growth in the county jail population. As a result, taxpayers avoided the $100 million cost of building a third jail and $21 million a year to operate it.

They saved millions more by scuttling plans to build a second juvenile detention center.

The number of inmates was pared by stopping the booking of minor offenders from suburban cities, getting more criminals into treatment for mental illness and substance abuse, and using electronic home detention, community service and work release.

Those efforts would have failed if Sims' staff hadn't put in place treatment programs and supervision for those alternatives to jail, said Mark Larson, Prosecuting Attorney Norm Maleng's chief criminal deputy.

By working with unions and increasing employee health-care co-payments, Sims slowed the rise in health-care spending to 2.4 percent in the first nine months of this year while other employers are facing double-digit increases. Sims also has formed a partnership with health-care providers and the region's largest employers to find ways of keeping costs from spiraling back out of control.

Sims' budget cuts, combined with modest debt and strong cash reserves, have won King County the top bond ratings given by three national rating firms to local governments. Fitch this month called the county's financial management "excellent," while Standard & Poor's labeled it "exceptional."

But Sims' management record also includes the collapse of a $38 million computer project in 2000.

The project, which was supposed to unify the county's payroll and finance computer systems, burned through its entire budget without completing even half the job.

It took $4 million more to "stabilize" the one part of the payroll system that was installed and to figure out what went wrong. A consultant has estimated it will take another $70 million — a number currently under review — to finish the job.

A post-mortem study said the project failed for a number of reasons, including poor teamwork and oversight, costly customization of software, and management of the payroll project by a department that lacked experience in projects of that complexity.

After five years of study, Sims wants to slowly restart the project.

He says his administration has learned the lessons of the fiasco. Lesson one: Change business practices to fit the new software, not the other way around. Lesson two: Make sure all agencies — many not controlled by Sims — are committed to the project.

The lesson about collaboration has paid off in the project to reduce the jail population, Sims says.

His management style, he says, "is to hire people who are smarter than you are."

Irons sees mostly failure on Sims' part.

"Let's be honest here," Irons says. "Any CEO of a company the size of King County would have been fired long ago for the things Sims has done. A board of directors would never tolerate $40 million computer fiascoes, or being made the laughingstock of the country over the ineptness of our elections office."

This election could be Sims' last run for public office, though he doesn't rule out a fourth run for executive, a job that pays $165,305 a year. He says he doesn't want to be viewed as a lame duck if he's re-elected Nov. 8.

After his unsuccessful bids for U.S. Senate and governor, he says, "Higher office is out of the cards — trust me. I think the voters have spoken twice."

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com