Irons quiet on council service

When he's asked what he has accomplished on the Metropolitan King County Council, David Irons points first to the law that cost him his job.

In 2002, Irons and the late Kent Pullen introduced a charter amendment to shrink the council from 13 members to nine to save the county money. After years of legal and political maneuvering, voters finally approved it last fall.

That victory backfired on Irons when a bipartisan redistricting commission produced a new map in January that left him without a district. So Irons chose to challenge King County Executive Ron Sims instead.

With the race much closer than most observers expected, the Sammamish Republican could get the last laugh.

Irons says his role in shrinking the council says something important about his record. "Some people were looking out for themselves and sometimes making deals," he says of fellow council members. "I was looking at what was best for the county."

Others say the episode shows Irons is a council outsider. He often has been on the losing end of big votes in recent years, including the selection of redistricting commissioners who effectively unseated him.

Unlike some Republicans on the Democrat-dominated council, "he won't play ball with the liberal Democrats — or they won't play ball with him," says lobbyist Martin Durkan Jr., who has contributed to Sims' campaign. "He has just been shut out, basically."

In six years on the County Council, Irons has established a record as an advocate for rural property owners who chafe at county land-use restrictions. He has supported more roads and opposed Sound Transit's Seattle light-rail line.

He has been a loud and frequent critic of the county elections office's flubs. He has supported some taxes and opposed others. He isn't the council's most liberal Republican, nor is he its most conservative.

Irons' campaign isn't emphasizing his service on the council; just one of the seven radio and TV spots it has aired so far even mentions it. Instead, the campaign is playing up his private-sector background as a telecommunications and Internet executive.

Democrat Sims may be talking more about Irons' record than Irons is. As the race has tightened, the incumbent is trying to define — in the most unflattering terms — just who his little-known challenger is.

"He's been a consistent, conservative obstructionist," Sims campaign spokesman Christian Sinderman says of Irons.

Growth was the issue that catapulted Irons from the Issaquah School Board to the County Council in 1999. He upended slow-growth GOP incumbent Brian Derdowski by arguing that Derdowski's policies hadn't stopped growth, and that the fast-growing suburban-rural district needed to build the schools and roads to accommodate it.

Other council Republicans welcomed Irons; at the time they held a 7-6 majority but, with maverick Derdowski the seventh vote, it had been tenuous before.

During his first two years Irons chaired the council's utilities committee, but he says he mostly focused on district concerns. He sided with neighbors in scaling back development plans for a county park on the Snoqualmie River. He cast the swing vote that allowed houses on what had been protected forest land near North Bend, angering nearby residents.

His office also developed a reputation for responding quickly to constituents' concerns. "He's taken care of a lot of little things that are important to the people in his district," says Bob Gillespie, a lobbyist who has donated to both campaigns but has given more to Irons.

Republicans lost their majority in the 2001 election. Unlike some other council Republicans, Irons hasn't chaired a council committee since. He says that was his choice: He decided he could do more as vice chairman of more important committees — growth management, budget — than as chairman of one of the second-tier panels Democrats allowed Republicans to lead.

Irons maintains he has accomplished more in his last four years on the council, with Democrats in charge, than in his first two. Besides downsizing the council, his self-selected greatest hits include:

• A successful charter amendment he co-sponsored with Seattle Democrat Larry Phillips that allows the county to adopt budgets every two years rather than annually. When it's phased in, Irons says, the change will allow the county to make money decisions more thoughtfully.

• A compromise ordinance he championed in 2003 that allows "boutique" wineries on rural and agricultural lands.

• New language in the county's growth-management plan that recognizes the importance of protecting and nurturing small businesses and cottage industries in rural areas.

Sims spokesman Sinderman says two issues illustrate the wide gap between Irons' views and those of most King County voters.

Irons opposed a county sales-tax increase that voters approved in 2000 to restore money Metro Transit had lost when a statewide initiative eliminated its motor-vehicle excise tax funding. Without the new tax money, Sims warned, bus service would have been gutted.

Irons says he wanted to wait, look for ways to cut Metro overhead, then perhaps come back to voters later with a smaller tax proposal.

He also fought Sims' plans for the East Lake Sammamish Trail, now scheduled to follow old railroad right of way between the lake and expensive waterfront homes and provide the last link in a trail network from Seattle to the Cascades. Work on the final, most controversial segment began this summer.

Irons says his differences with Sims on the trail were more about process than substance. The county bullied lakefront landowners, he argues: "The only way Ron knows how to deal with people is with an iron fist."

Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com