3-commissioner county governance must go

Cowlitz voters should demand home rule charter to replace antiquated ruling model

A previous version of this story incorrectly described a 1998 Cowlitz County home rule charter proposed to voters and misidentified Dee O’Neill.

Making a major change often requires an upheaval.

Recent public pique with two Cowlitz County commissioners should revive interest in replacing the county’s form of government with a “home rule” charter. 

Home rule involves electing 15 to 25 freeholders to craft a new form of government and then submitting it to voters for approval. It’s like drafting a mini constitution for the county.

As conflicted and chaotic as county government has become recently under the new two-bloc majority of Rick Dahl and Arne Mortensen, its problems go back for years.  That’s why this issue should transcend partisan, near-term politics.

No one seems to be actively pushing the matter now, but there is a broad undercurrent of latent support for the idea. For example, former Cowlitz County Commissioner George Raiter, a Democrat, and incumbent Republican county commissioner Dennis Weber favor home rule. Ramona Leber, a Republican leader and former Longview mayor, says she dislikes the existing three-commissioner form of government and is open to the idea of home rule.

The home rule process typically takes years and certainly would go beyond the terms of Mortensen and Weber. Both of their four-year terms expire next year, and neither is likely to seek re-election.

The three-commissioner form of government still in use in Cowlitz and 31 other Washington counties originated in the 1850s, predating statehood by more than 30 years. Back then, the chief function of county government was law enforcement and road construction. 

Cowlitz County government today is complex and expensive, with 536 full-time and 70 part-time workers, an operating budget of $77 million and a total budget of more than $200 million.  Commissioners are elected based on notoriety and political leanings, but they generally have little or no expertise in public administration.

Under the commissioner form of government, lines of authority and accountability are unclear to the public and department heads.  

There is no separation of power, with commissioners acting as administrators, legislators and, in some cases, serving in  quasi-judicial roles. 

The limited size of the board discourages compromise and concentrates power in too few people. Just two people can make major decisions. Gov. Jay Inslee is reputed to have once told a San Juan county commissioner that “commissioners are the most powerful elected official(s) in the state because you only have to convince one other person to your point of view.” 

And commissioners, who meet in the mornings on business days, get precious little exposure to constituents because they are tied up in the old courthouse when most people are at work.

Two commissioners cannot confer privately — a good way to negotiate and achieve consensus — because they’d constitute a quorum and violate the state open meetings law.

These shortcomings have consequences.

Today, the county’s chief of staff and finance director positions are vacant. Turnover of women staffers is rapid.

The county is hoarding tax revenues for homeless programs. 

Because of the political divisions on the current board, department heads have learned to confer separately with commissioners to weigh support for budgets and programs.

Major decisions such as determining the purchase and management of the Headquarters Landfill and, about two decades ago, building a new county jail take notoriously long and often are fraught with discord.

Certainly some of the blame for these problems goes to  incompetencies and conflicts among the office holders. But some is endemic to the system.

Seven of Washington’s 39 counties have adopted so-called home rule charters, but those counties cover 63% of the state’s population.  The term reflects the fact that people in those counties design their own government as an alternative to the three-commissioner form outlined in the Washington Constitution. 

The sky is the limit in developing home rule charters. They could, for example, impose term limits, make it easier to remove county officeholders and give voters the power of initiative and referendum. Whatever the elected freeholders propose must be approved by voters.

Home rule charters typically give administrative authority to an unelected executive, a source of concern for some critics. However, that person is answerable to the elected council or commission. And a parallel structure — the city manager — has proven successful in municipalities.  

Republicans, who make constant calls to streamline government, should recognize the value a professional manager could bring to the job.  

Lewis County, the most conservative place in Western Washington, has a county administrator, though it still has the traditional three-commissioner form of governance.

The state’s seven home-ruled counties are Clallam, King, Pierce, Snohomish, Clark, Island and Whatcom. Cowlitz is smaller than five of these but more populous than Island and Clallam. 

Clark County is the latest county to adopt a home rule form of government, which took effect in on Jan. 1,  2015. The process there has a long and complex history, with three previous failures dating back to 1982.

Cowlitz County flirted with home rule twice: In the 1970s and again in the 1990s. 

The 1998 attempt to adopt a home rule charter failed at the ballot box, 54% to 46 %. The freeholders’ plan would have converted most county elective offices — such as auditor, treasurer, sheriff and coroner — to nonpartisan elected positions.  Both political parties objected.

In 2016-17,  a widely bipartisan group gathered to explore home rule again in Cowlitz County. It consisted of Don Lemmons, a conservative Longview businessman; Rosemary Siipola, a former Kalama city councilwoman and unabashed liberal;  accountant and former Kelso Mayor David Futcher;  Democratic activist Teresa Purcell; the late Dee O’Neill, who was a democratic activist and League of Women Voters member;  Brian Magnuson, the former owner of Cascade Networks; and retired Cowlitz County District Court Judge Ron Marshall.

Kris Swanson, the then-county auditor who just became Longview’s city manager, and Terry McLaughlin, then the county assessor, supported the effort.

The effort fizzled back then, but not before the bipartisan group sketched out a skeleton framework for new county governance. 

Its chief idea was creating an elected, five-member county council to replace the three commissioners. Their pay would be half the commissioners’ current salaries. (With benefits, each Cowlitz commissioner now makes more than $100,000 annually).  

Under the plan, salary savings would have gone to hire a county manager, who would oversee department heads and handle administration in an effort to separate legislative and executive powers.

All other elected offices would continue to be filled by voters at the ballot box.

This vision was patterned somewhat after Clark County’s new charter, which was approved by 53% of the voters in 2014. Approval down there came after public outcry over decisions made by two conservative commissioners — David Madore and Tom Mielke. 

There’s an old saying in politics that you shouldn’t waste a good crisis, and we have one now.

The county commissioners themselves could set the home rule process in motion, but it’s doubtful that commissioners Mortensen and Dahl would support it. 

Voters could force the issue through the initiative process, as they did in Clark County.  The first of several steps would  be for 10% of registered county voters to petition for the election of freeholders to frame a new charter.

Home rule is a bipartisan and common sense idea that can improve government. Its time has come.