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Portraits Jim Brunner

Paul W. Locke / The hound of local government howls at waste and begs to be heard

When the Seattle City Council meets, you can be virtually assured of a couple things. They'll talk enthusiastically about ways to spend more taxpayer money. And Paul W. Locke will be watching.

If you've been to council chambers during the past few decades, you may have seen the white-bearded, craggy-faced retiree who's become a City Hall fixture.

With uncanny fortitude, Locke sits attentively through droning bureaucratic briefings that threaten to put the rest of the room to sleep. Sometimes he is the only member of the public on hand. Often, he shakes his head in disgust.

They ought to name his usual perch after him: front row, 10th from the right as you face the council dais.

And City Hall is not his only haunt. Locke also is a dedicated observer of the King County Council, Sound Transit board, state legislative committees and other regional panels too tedious to mention.

County Councilman Pete von Reichbauer says he once offered Locke a nameplate at county budget meetings. "He had a better attendance record than some of the members."

Locke, 84, became a government watcher some time after retiring as a U.S. Army mail clerk in 1967. "I picked it up for something to do," he says.

But Locke doesn't want to talk about himself. What's important, he says, is that people pay attention to his ideas on how the government could stop wasting so dang much money.

Like how they could build a new Alaskan Way Viaduct and Highway 520 bridge like modular homes — manufacture the pieces off-site and truck the bits in to be screwed together fast and cheap. "I preach to all these people about it," he says.

But they don't listen. Every year brings another boondoggle. Sound Transit, the viaduct, low-income-housing levies. "When's it gonna end?" Locke laments.

He lives frugally in a cooperative apartment building on Capitol Hill. Doesn't have a phone. Frequently wears the same plaid shirts and slacks. He says he added up his taxes last year and found they totaled more than all his other expenses.

Maybe we should just cut the government off, he says. The farmers in the Yelm prairie, where Locke grew up, told the roads commissioner they couldn't pay more taxes in the '30s. "He became real creative."

"As long as the public keeps giving them money, they'll never look at the cost. They'll waste every penny you give 'em."

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