King County Executive on electing v. appointing a sheriff

Dow Constantine talks to Marcie Sillman about the Sheriff's office, Covid-19 cases in the county, and more bad news for the West Seattle bridge.

This is a transcript of Marcie Sillman's conversation with King County Executive Dow Constantine on Tuesday, July 14, 2020.

This afternoon, the King County Council is going to consider a proposal that would make the sheriff an appointed position instead of elected. Do you support the idea of appointing the sheriff?

I think it should be submitted to the voters.

I opposed making the sheriff an elected position when that happened, some decades ago. I do think that has pluses and minuses but one of the things I've been able to observe up close is the degree to which those politics get introduced into the sheriff's office, among the rank and file and causes kind of unnecessary rank over there. And I think that having an appointed sheriff could help smooth things a bit. It puts the accountability with the executive and the county council and allows you to remove a sheriff if they're not doing the job right.

But I do think that you know, regardless -- and I don't have a beef with the current sheriff -- but I think regardless, it would be good to have people have a chance to weigh in on this.

There has been a 23 member citizen board considering this and they made this recommendation. And one of the things they cited was the fact that the vast majority of people who elect the sheriff -- and I believe that means those of us who live in incorporated, urban areas -- don't live in in the specific parts of the county that the sheriff polices. They also say that that this would increase accountability. So what's your response to both of those?

Well, I do definitely think it increases accountability. It shifts the accountability to the executive and to the council. But it also means that the sheriff can be immediately held to account if there is any kind of misbehavior in the department.

I agree that there is a misalignment between the electorate and the office. The sheriff's office has jurisdiction in the unincorporated area. That's a jurisdiction of about 250,000 in our county of 2.3 million, and then with contract cities. Cities contract with the sheriff's office, smaller cities for police services. So it is not an ideal situation.

It is not -- as are many of these systems we have -- it's kind of cobbled together and doesn't perfectly align the accountability with the responsibility. And I think that it would be best if the people had a chance to really debate this issue and weigh in on it.

Last week, you and I were talking about the sheriff's department and how it does investigations of malfeasance of its own officers and right now, that's an internal process. There's an independent body that monitors and reviews but ultimately this is done within the sheriff's department itself. Would appointing a sheriff allow the creation of an independent investigatory body, or can you do that now before that higher issue is decided?

There is an investigatory body in the legislative branch called the Office for Law Enforcement Oversight (OLEO), and the challenge is that it doesn't have a lot of authority to do that oversight.

The responsibility -- it is something that has to be negotiated with law enforcement unions, what kind of oversight is allowed. And because it has to be negotiated, it has been difficult to get appropriate authority for that office to be able to provide outside oversight of the sheriff's office.

Obviously, if the county executive can be held directly accountable and in turn can hold the sheriff correctly accountable, there is more opportunity for that direct oversight. But even short of that, I believe that we should decouple the bargaining of police accountability and oversight from the bargaining over wages and benefits and so forth, so that we can have a little bit clearer view of what's going on with our police agencies.

Just to go back to the proposal that county council members are going to consider, it is to appoint rather than elect the sheriff, but that decision would be passed on to the voters?

This is a charter amendment. There are many charter amendments that will be offered to the voters this year. Every 10 years I believe, there's a charter review, maybe every five years. And they have a commission that goes through all of the county charter, which is from the late 60s and recommends changes. And this is one of the changes that's been recommended by the commission. And the county council decides which of those recommendations go forward as ballot proposals.

The state of Washington now has more than 40,000 confirmed coronavirus cases since the start of the pandemic in early March. What's King County look like right now?

We have obviously more cases than we had a few weeks ago and that's disturbing, but it is kind of a stable number right now.

The average has been 132 per day of new identified cases over the last week. It's really just hovered right around that 130 to 180 range. And I'm concerned about it -- I'm concerned because the so-called R0 or the infection rate is above 1.0. Right now at 1.4, a little bit down from last week.

I'm concerned that the upswing has really been in younger people who are apparently not being as cautious as they were early on. 72% of new cases are people under the age of 40. And I think that that's really indicating that people are letting their guard down, that they're gathering, summer get togethers and so forth, and that the virus is being spread in that way.

Hospitalizations are not increasing because that group doesn't have symptoms that are as severe in general, but they eventually interact with people who are more vulnerable and we expect hospitalizations and unfortunately, deaths to increase as this group that is becoming infected starts to interact with people who are older or sicker.

Did we move too fast into Phase 2 [of Governor Inslee's Safe Start Recovery Plan]?

I don't think so. I think the issue is -- and this is a difficult issue about sort of group psychology -- that when you signal that things are being opened up by, for instance, letting people visit restaurants. People let their guard down in a lot of other ways. And those are the ways in which the virus is actually being transmitted.

A lot of the economic activities that have been newly allowed are not contributing appreciably to transmission. But people going to parties, people going to gatherings at their friends' homes, people going to family gatherings are -- especially when those are above the limit of five people that is in Phase 2 requirements -- those are the things that are causing the increase in infections.

And people need to really be reminded that this pandemic is out there, that infections are out there, that they need to mask up, avoid gatherings, avoid being inside in groups, avoid doing the things that are going to expose themselves and their loved ones to danger.

Has the county had to take any action against businesses that have not enforced mask wearing?

Businesses are doing much better than they were a few weeks ago.

Over the weekend, public health staff conducted spot checks on, for example, 116 taverns and restaurants that have bars in them. And we've inspected 378 food establishments over the last 10 days.

The biggest challenges they're finding are lack of customer contact tracing capacity and then worryingly about 31% of the places were not fully complying with having their their workers cover their faces. And about 28% were not doing symptom screening for employees.

There was a restaurant at Alki that was closed last week for some fairly egregious violations and they had had 6 or 7 infections associated with the restaurant. I don't know if they have corrected those deficiencies and gotten relicensed yet but public health or local authorities will close businesses, if necessary in order to correct those compliance problems.

Leah: What have we learned from contact tracing? Are we able to actually follow the thread and find the source? We also have heard a lot about testing and tracing delays. How is that all playing out in King County?

Contact and case tracing is intended to identify people who need medical services to get contacts of those people and get them tested and to promote isolation and quarantine among those who may have been exposed.

We had, for example, 947 cases that were investigated last week. Little over half of those were done by the state, the rest by King County. We completed most of those, meaning that we were able to be in touch with the co-workers or the family of the people who had tested positive. And 75% of those were completed on the same day. That allows us to notify people they may have been infected, to get them into testing, to have them quarantine, so that you don't inadvertently infect others.

The big problem now is a national shortage of reagent -- the chemicals used in the testing. And this is another national failure, has to do in part with the huge upsurge in cases, particularly across the Sunbelt. But it is causing the number of days you have to wait to get your test back to increase dramatically from same day up to now 4 or 5 or more days.

You should still get tested if you think you've been exposed. Just expect that it's going to be a little bit of a wait. And if you really do think you've been exposed, you need to keep yourself isolated. You need to avoid exposing others until you're sure that you're in the clear.

We checked in with you last week about masks on public transit and that masks would be provided. Do you know any more about that?

Metro has been vetting and selecting vendors to provide the dispensers and masks. And they expect within the next few weeks to be -- next week, I think -- letting the contract and having those installed within the next few weeks throughout the metro system. So that's one of those mechanical, logistical issues that needs to get handled and it's being handled right now.

At this point in time, the buses that I see going up and down my streets, those are still for essential trips only, correct? We're not back to widespread service?

Metro service is considerably less than it was, but we are continuing to provide service for anyone who needs it.

Metro does require masks on transit. We urge everyone to wear a mask. If they're using transit, if they're indoors, anywhere else. And we of course recognize some people can't wear masks for medical reasons, so they will not be excluded.

But we still have no fares being collected. Only using the rear door. We're installing plexiglass shields for the operators to help avoid unnecessary contact and we're doing everything we can to keep transit safe, but also keep it moving because it really is a lifeline for many, many people in our community, including essential workers.

A lot of people in our area, especially white people, are doing some reading about systemic racism right now and how they can be better allies. What are you reading?

I've been reading a lot of the periodicals now, articles people are writing about the ways in which this moment gives us a chance to possibly overcome some of the failures of America that go back really well before the nation's founding.

I had my entire staff -- and I know some people have recommend this -- read "The New Jim Crow" when it first came out. And that has helped form -- although there are other perspectives even within the civil rights community -- that has helped form the basis for some of the work we've been attempting to do, over the course of time with our equity and social justice office and all of our work to create a racially just King County.

And I am extremely excited about the opportunities that the convergence of crises that we have now present for us to create the community we want and the nation wants. It's obviously a bumpy ride. Obviously, a lot of challenges, but also within that sort of upending of the status quo, the opportunity to have America come closer to its founding ideals and have our community be a place where everyone is welcome and has an opportunity to thrive. Most of my conversations during the day are now around this issue and I'm excited about what the budget will hold and what the next couple of years will provide us in terms of an opportunity for progress.

Roland in Seattle: My question actually was in regards to your office helping out the recovery homes, because I live in a recovery home. And I have 9 roommates and I'm with one of the largest ones in the state of Washington, which is under the Oxford Houses. And we don't have any kind of direction in regards to how to use social distance in a house with 9 individuals. Some other homes are like 6 or 7, but also a lot of the guys and girls are essential workers. And I experienced a roommate who came down with Covid. And fortunately for that person, they did have family located in Washington area. But we're not getting any kind of direction from the main Washington location, as well as inside info. What we do is a weekly meeting, which is a house meeting. And so really watching what's going on, I've asked my roommates to do meetings outside in the backyard, but we're not getting a lot of direction.

We have been very, very concerned with congregate homes and congregate settings over the course of the pandemic. And we've gone into many, many dozens of senior facilities of various sorts to make sure that they have the right health practices in place.

We've been able to distance people who are in homeless shelters by renting hotels. We've even even succeeded in distancing people within the jails and preventing an outbreak there. And the homes that you're talking about, if that's a place that's been missed either by the state or the county in terms of coming in with expertise, advice, and assistance, I want to make sure that we get that in front of our public health agencies. So if the producer could get your number, I'd love to have our folks follow up and be in contact with you about getting assistance to you.

Drea in South Park: I'm a metro operator and I was driving essential workers until this week. And we got informed that we're facing layoffs and reduction in staff and you've talked about the importance of transit. And at the same time, we negotiated a contract that had a modest raise, and that's being held up and we're being told the county is asking us to renegotiate that, but they're not asking the other unions to renegotiate. And so I go to work each day. I put myself at risk. I put my family, my community at risk, and yet, I'm not really feeling like operators are being valued. Why should an operator, a part-time operator lose their job at this time?

The answer to your question is because Metro is funded by the sales tax and is facing about a $300 million deficit this year and about $600 million in the next biennium. So there are inevitable reductions born of that.

The pay increases negotiated before Covid was 3% per year, which kept Metro operators in the top echelon, the top 2 or 3 of agencies nationally. And that increased costs I believe $75 million. That is going to be reflected as well, in cuts to service and to employment because there is no way to avoid that. There's only so much money to pay for transit.

I sent a letter to the union asking if in light of the Covid crisis and the ensuing economic collapse, we could renegotiate. That was refused. So I've sent the contract, as is required by me, to the county council and they will be taking it up shortly.

You can hear the pain in Drea's voice though, this is a tough time for everybody.

It is very difficult times. I will tell you that one solution to this is for the state legislature to fix the state tax system, so that transit is not so heavily reliant on this volatile revenue source. Washington is unique in the lack of funding from the state government for local transit agencies, and unique in having transit agencies rely on sales tax, which tends to collapse every time the economy hiccups.

We know now that the low rise West Seattle swing bridge also has some cracks that need repair. It's going to be open for travelers according to Seattle Department of Transportation, but they are going to be doing work, so I guess as a West Seattleite it's just another reason for you never to go back to your office, right?

I'll take the water taxi.

Well, exactly. Will you lower the County Water Taxi fare if that's the best way for people to get across the water?

I haven't really engaged in that question. It does cost more to run the water taxi than the bus. But we're going to be increasing service on the water taxi as people began to return to the office, whenever that happens. And the city of Seattle has been working closely with us around making sure the bus service is adequate to get people to and from downtown Seattle and other points outside of the Duwamish peninsula.

And this is a issue of particular concern, obviously, for me as West Seattleite, but it is an economic issue for the entire region. A lot of folks live in West Seattle and this sudden situation with the high level bridge and now the low level bridge is an extraordinary, more than inconvenience, it's a hindrance to economic recovery. So we're going to do whatever we can to help get past it.