King County executive: Job has less turf, more demands

There was a time when the King County executive oversaw the Sheriff's Office, the elections office and a major-league sports stadium, and served as the elected leader of more than a half-million people.

Now the number of residents living in the unincorporated part of the county has dwindled to about 343,000. The sheriff and elections director are separately elected, and the Kingdome is long gone.

The executive job remains plenty demanding, overseeing a nearly $5 billion budget and thousands of employees. But the role has largely shifted from acting as mayor of unincorporated King County to being administrator of a regional government.

"I look at their agenda and it's just not as interesting as it used to be," said Chris Vance, a member of the Metropolitan King County Council from 1994 to 2001 who now is a public-affairs consultant.

And yet five candidates have raised a total of more than $1.4 million in a bid to become the next county executive.

The executive position still has a lot going for it, said former Executive Ron Sims, who recently resigned to join President Obama's administration. "It's a premier job," said Sims, now deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. "There's no day that is the same ... you're trying to literally keep up. It's like drinking water out of a fire hose."

And as the elected head of the largest county in the state, being the King County executive serves as a steppingstone for higher office. Former governors John Spellman and Gary Locke held the job. Sims says he got the No. 2 job at HUD, in part, because he was the county executive.

With a salary of $186,038 a year, the county job even pays more than governor. Gov. Chris Gregoire makes $166,891.

Dramatic changes

The executive's role has changed dramatically over the years.

Former Executive Randy Revelle said that when he was in office from 1981 to 1985, he spent most of his time serving as the mayor of unincorporated King County, which then had around 550,000 residents.

He also was the chief law-enforcement officer for the area because the sheriff reported to him. Revelle was county executive during the Green River killings and created a task force to track down the serial killer.

Plus, the sports teams were a constant headache. "I probably got more publicity than Ron Sims, or the next executive will get for everything they do, because of the sports issues," he said.

Revelle narrowly lost his re-election bid in 1985. He blames his defeat on a long-running dispute with the Mariners over their Kingdome lease. The team threatened to leave Seattle unless it got a better deal.

The county sheriff, once appointed by the executive, became an elected position in 1996. The sports controversies went away, at least for the county executive, when the Kingdome was torn down in 2000. Separate public stadium authorities own Qwest Field, used by the Seahawks, and Safeco Field, used by the Mariners.

Also, the county elections job, which has proved controversial in past elections, became an elected office this year. The county prosecutor and auditor are elected as well.

Although unincorporated King County has shrunk as cities have annexed more land, the overall population of the county has swelled in the past 25 years, adding more than 500,000 people to reach 1.9 million today.

And regional services provided by the county, including transportation, health care and wastewater treatment, have expanded with the population.

Major shift in 1992

A big shift toward becoming a regional government occurred in 1992 when voters approved merging Metro (the Municipality of Metropolitan Seattle) with the county. That move put the executive in charge of the county's wastewater-treatment system and one of the largest bus systems in the country, with a fleet of 1,300 vehicles and an annual ridership of 100 million.

Today, the two services account for around 44 percent of the county's budget and much of the county executive's time.

The number of workers employed by the county went from around 5,000 people in the mid-1980s to nearly 14,000 full-time equivalents today, in part because of the merger with Metro.

And the county budget, which includes Metro, the Sheriff's Office and the court system, has jumped from $490 million to around $4.9 billion today.

"The executive's job is more complicated now" than it was 20 years ago, Sims said. "The executive operates and runs the government the same way a mayor runs the city. You're setting policy, you're dealing with intractable problems, you try to deal with federal issues and state issues. You are busy all the time."

Kurt Triplett, the executive until a replacement for Sims is elected, gets into work about 8 a.m. and leaves around 6 p.m. And then there are the late-night calls and e-mails.

His calendar shows a busy schedule, including meetings on jail operations, flood preparations, county paramedics and the budget.

"The job can consume you. It's fun to hear the candidates argue what they'd do because they really have no grasp of what the day is really like," said Triplett, who isn't running for the office.

"It's pretty relentless," he said, noting that a line of people was waiting for him outside his office, negotiating who would get to talk to him first.

Among the biggest issues Triplett — and the next county executive — must deal with are mounting budget troubles. Shortfalls of about $110 million in the general fund and $200 million in Metro Transit are expected over the next two years.

A springboard

The scope of the job — governing an area that includes about 29 percent of the state's population — makes it a good springboard for higher office.

"It can be argued that nothing better prepares you for managing state government," said Paul Berendt, a former chairman of the state Democratic Party.

The office, for the first time, is nonpartisan this election, but four of the top candidates have previously run as Democrats. Fred Jarrett and Ross Hunter serve in the state Legislature, while Larry Phillips and Dow Constantine are County Council members.

If any one of them wants to run for higher office later, becoming county executive would help him tap a large base of voters in a county with a dense concentration of Democrats. President Obama, for example, got more than 70 percent of the vote in King County in 2008.

"It's a huge advantage," Berendt said.

The position would be a big plus for an ambitious Republican as well, said Vance, a former chairman of the state Republican Party. The last Republican governor, Spellman, had earlier been executive.

In this year's race, the candidate most closely linked to the GOP is Susan Hutchison, a former TV anchor who once considered running for U.S. Senate as a Republican. She says she isn't aligned with any political party.

But Vance said, "If Susan Hutchison wins this election she instantly becomes nearly as big a player in the Republican Party as Rob McKenna," the state attorney general.

Although Vance thinks the job has diminished over time, its political importance has not faded, he said. "It's still a big, big job."

Andrew Garber: 360-236-8266 or agarber@seattletimes.com