In November last year, King County Executive Dow Constantine announced he will not seek re-election, opening the door for a successor to run the highest elected office in County government.
The King County executive oversees and proposes budgets for around a dozen county departments and can veto legislation from the County Council. Throughout its jurisdiction, King County government handles felony criminal and civil court services, manages public health, provides regional transit service, manages elections, treats sewage, and handles garbage collection outside of Seattle.
The County also provides services such as road maintenance, police, and parks to more than 250,000 people living in unincorporated areas. The King County Sheriff’s Office provides policing to cities including Burien, Shoreline and Sammamish. The County executive and County Council appoint the Sheriff.
The County executive also serves on the board of Sound Transit, and the governing board of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.
Three candidates are running to succeed Constantine.
King County Council Chair Claudia Balducci previously served as a Bellevue City Council member, as Director of the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention for King County, and as Bellevue mayor.
King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay was born in Sudan to Ethiopian refugees and settled in Seattle with his family when he was three years old. He grew up in public housing in South Seattle and worked in community organizing and law firms after graduating college. He was elected to the County Council in 2019, successfully challenging six-term incumbent Larry Gossett.
County Assessor John Wilson previously worked as a print and TV reporter, as a congressional staffer and chief of staff for former executive Ron Sims, and as County Assessor for a decade. The County Assessor’s office is responsible for assessing property values and collecting property taxes.
Balducci, who often commutes by bus and on foot through the Chinatown International District (CID) and Little Saigon, stressed that the CID is unique in the United States, and uniquely threatened, bearing the brunt of challenges in Seattle, such as public safety, homelessness, addiction, poverty, crime, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I believe that the next County executive needs to do a lot more to partner with the City of Seattle, actively partner and make sure that we are providing a safe experience on the streets of the Chinatown International District,” Balducci said. “Where we put investments, we see improvements.”
Zahilay said the County and City should treat the CID “with a higher level of priority” and bring a new level of focus and collaboration with the community. He said he would form a work group with the City, state and federal government to focus on issues affecting the CID.
Wilson raised the alarm about public safety, displacement in the CID, and the loss of affordable housing. “There’s a real struggle that is going on for the economic vitality of the ID,” he said. “And there’s this concern, clearly from residents, from visitors, from merchants, that they want to make sure that that’s a safe community.”
Sound Transit’s second light rail station in the CID
The King County executive is a member of the Sound Transit Board.
Balducci chairs the Sound Transit System Expansion Committee. During a meeting of the committee early in 2023, Balducci said building a second light rail station in the CID on 5th Avenue is “culturally unfeasible” for the board, and that the board would not choose it. A station on 5th Avenue was unanimously rejected by the CID community as early as 2022.
In November last year, some community members were confused and angered when Sound Transit brought forward study results about the second light rail station in the CID that included the 5th Avenue option.
In a recent interview with the Examiner, Balducci reiterated that she does not support a 5th Avenue station because of its “impacts being too great to an already struggling, fragile community that we desperately want to protect.”
“I will not support a 5th Avenue option, and I do not hear anyone at the board saying that,” Balducci said. “So I hope to reassure the community.”
Balducci said Sound Transit staff were required to continue studying options, but she would consider providing clearer direction to the agency that “you don’t need to study [5th Avenue] anymore. That way we can hopefully reassure the community and put to bed the fear that it is being revived. It is not being revived.”
MaryKate Ryan, Preservation Planner with Historic South Downtown, said the organization was surprised to see the 5th Avenue station come up in the presentation, since it had not been used in any staff presentations since February 2023. “So to have it pop back up in November 2024 was an unpleasant surprise, and an interesting choice by Sound Transit,” Ryan said in an email to the International Examiner. “We are hoping to hear more clarity that other board members – particularly those who are new to the Board since 2022 – understand what is at stake here.”
Almost no members of the Sound Transit Board responded to an emailed question from the International Examiner about where they stand on the 5th Avenue option.
Callie Craighead, spokesperson for Mayor Harrell’s office, said Harrell (who is a member of the Sound Transit Board) supports Sound Transit’s preferred alternative: Two stations, one at Dearborn Street (south of the neighborhood), and one near the current Pioneer Square station. This option is also known as the north and south of CID option.
Regarding the 5th Avenue option, Craighead wrote in an email to the International Examiner: “The 5th Avenue station was part of Sound Transit’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement published in 2022 and will continue to be present in study results and environmental documents in the years ahead just like all other station locations along the Ballard alignment that have multiple options.”
For his part, Zahilay also does not favor 5th Avenue. He noted that the CID community is divided between a 4th Avenue Station and the north and south of CID option.
Balducci and Zahilay both want the station to be built at 4th Avenue station if possible. “I think there is no doubt that the 4th Avenue alternative is the best transportation decision if we’re talking about creating the most well-connected system,” Zahilay said.
In November, however Sound Transit analysis cast doubt on a 4th Avenue station. “The experts are saying it is technically infeasible. There are engineering issues, there are jurisdictional issues,” Zahilay said. “At this time, I don’t feel like I’m in a position to override the technical transportation experts….And so that’s where I am right now, in an information-gathering stage.”
Wilson said he had no stance on where the CID’s second light rail station should be built. “I just have questions about the efficacy of building another multi billion dollar light rail system,” he said.
Addiction and overdoses in downtown Seattle
Public Health – Seattle & King County is jointly managed by King County and the City of Seattle, and offers overdose prevention and response services. Downtown Seattle, including the CID, has the highest overdose rates in the county.
In response to the crisis in overdoses and addiction in the street, all three candidates support more funding for addiction services, shelter, and mental health treatment.
Wilson emphasized the importance of wraparound services accessible to people where they are.
Zahilay emphasized his work with Executive Constantine on proposing the King County Crisis Care Center Levy, to build more recovery centers and mobile crisis response systems, and more options for emergency phone numbers for people in crisis. He said he will build on this work. “At the same time, we also need to go upstream before people are addicted and before people are overdosing, to make sure that they have a sense of community, to have a sense of connectedness, to have stable housing, have good jobs that give them a sense of economic security and a sense of purpose,” Zahilay said. “All those things are super important as well. And then we also have to identify where these illegal drugs that are damaging our communities are coming from, and put a stop to that.”
Balducci also emphasized the need to “help folks get what they need to launch a successful life. A person having a successful life is less likely to end up with a serious drug problem, although that can happen to people, due to lots of things beyond any individual’s control,” she said.
Balducci said there is a shortage of available drug treatment and mental health beds. “We have lost all sorts of services that are needed. We need to build them.” She said it is important to build services throughout the County, and not concentrate them in one neighborhood, like downtown or the CID.
In addition to the crisis centers from the King County Crisis Care Center Levy, Balducci wants the Council to consider the more immediate option of using part of an unused wing of the King County Jail as an emergency healthcare and detox facility where people on the streets can be taken, cared for, and connected to services.
Threats to immigrants and refugees from the Trump administration
In the face of a Trump presidency, all three candidates affirmed they would work to protect immigrants in King County from mass deportation raids by the federal government.
Balducci mentioned her time as director of the County Jail, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement would direct the jail to hold people in jail after they were ready to be released. “We stopped doing that because the Feds don’t pay us to do their job, and we didn’t fully agree with the way they were doing their job,” she said.
During the pandemic, Balducci heard that people eligible to seek legal status couldn’t pay the exorbitant fees just to file for asylum. She helped the Council put together a first-in-the-nation legal fund to help protect people from deportation. “I would look for more ways to do that – how can we help people to stabilize?” This would include shortening the time that migrant workers can be eligible for work.
Balducci noted that although the County committed to not allowing ICE to make deportation flights out of Boeing Field, the courts ruled that the County does not have the authority to block these flights. “I believe that the government needs to follow our own laws,” she said. “But there’s so much we can do for people to help them, with housing, with services, with a path to stability in this country.”
Wilson said he would not allow County resources to be used for “wholesale roundup of immigrants,” but that immigrants who are guilty of crime should go through the criminal justice system. “No one who’s here in King County should have to live in the fear that the INS, or whoever it is, is going to come knock on their door.”
Zahilay said with Trump in office, the County should conduct vulnerability analysis of which funding streams would likely be cut or impacted by federal agencies, and prepare accordingly. He said the County needs to form strong relationships with community organizations that serve immigrants and refugees to understand their needs, such as affordable housing, culturally-appropriate healthcare, education and public safety. He also said King County government should work closely with Washington state’s federal delegation to let them know what’s happening on the ground, and to learn what’s coming from the federal government.
