The county’s electoral landscape and what it means
In the State of Washington (and probably most other states) the “County Commission” is a critical governmental choke point. Nowhere else in our layers of government, national, state, county, and municipal, do fewer people hold more power—a fact little recognized by voters (including this author—at least until the last few years).
In the United States, at the national and state levels, government is composed of the traditional three branches we were taught about in school: executive, legislative, and judicial. As individual voters, our say in the legislative branch at a national and state level is heavily diluted. Consider that, nationally, each of us has a voting voice in electing just one of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives and two of the hundred members of the U.S. Senate. Similarly, in Washington State each registered voter casts a ballot to elect just two of 98 state representatives and one of 49 state senators. In contrast, since January 2023, in Spokane County we vote to elect one of only five county commissioners. Those five hold sway over all of county business while functioning as a combined executive and legislative body.
On account of this narrowing of executive and legislative power my message in this post is that we should all pay greater attention to who it is that we elect as county commissioners. This election season in Spokane County three of five commissioners are up for re-election but only one of those three has a challenger—a very competitive and competent challenger worth your vote. Molly Marshall is challenging Al French for the Spokane County District 5 seat that Mr. French now holds. (District 5—see map below.)
The County Government
Most county governments in Washington State, as established at the state level by the Washington State Constitution (Article XI, Section 4) and the Revised Code of Washington (Chapter 36.32), combine the executive and legislative functions in one county commission consisting of just three commissioners. Each commissioner comes from one of three county districts of approximately equal population—but is finally elected by a countywide majority vote in the general election. (Note: Spokane County, since January 2023 is an exception—see below). A countywide-elected three member county commission is a recipe for uniformity of opinion and concentration of power in one dominant individual commissioner. (Washington State’s Open Public Meeting law, passed in 1971 long after the three commissioner system was established, had the unintended consequence of prohibiting two commissioners from talking about anything touching on county business outside of a public meeting, since two commissioners is a quorum in a three person commission.)
In the decade prior to January 2023 the Spokane County Commission consisted of three mostly like-minded Republican commissioners (thanks to countywide election) dominated by Commissioner Al French, who has served on the commission since 2011 (and previously served on the City of Spokane City Council). In 2018 the Washington State legislature passed a law that changed county governance structure in counties with a population of 400,000 or more to five commissioners elected by district, not countywide. This was apparently such a threat to Mr. French’s power and dominance that he (and others) took a lawsuit challenging constitutionality of the new law all the way to the Washington State Supreme Court—where they lost.
Have a look at the map of the new districts. (Click here to see the map online where it might be easier to magnify and examine it. It is not an easy map to read.) Here is a much more readable map based on Googlemaps (but lacking the municipal boundaries). Take note that the five districts are required to contain roughly equal populations. As a result, Districts 1 and 2, while geographically small, mostly lie within the boundary of the City of Spokane and constitute forty percent of the population of the entire county. Districts 3 and 4 (NE and SE) similarly enclose forty percent of the county’s population. Districts 3 and 4 achieve that by dividing between them the people of the City of Spokane Valley. District 5 (W and SW) takes in a fifth of the county’s population by including several portions of the City of Spokane, including parts of the South Hill, northwestern Spokane, the Airport, and the Grandview and Latah neighborhoods, as well as the more sparsely populated West Plains.
One thing made clear from the map of the current five districts is that the county commissioners in Spokane County are meant to represent the citizens of the entire county—not just those who live outside municipal boundaries—a common misconception. The Spokane County Commission is a layer of government that overlies and interlocks with municipal governments. I’m not sure what the current count is, but Commissioner Al French once proudly stated on the county website that he served on forty “local, regional, and statewide Boards and Commissions.” A whole lot of what happens in the government that affects us happens on those boards of which most of us are barely aware. Holding a seat on so many boards is a position of immense power often exercised largely out of the awareness of the majority of the public.
Bottom line: County commissioner is a powerful position. Voters ought to pay close attention. County commissioners serve in four year terms. Three of the five Spokane County Commissioners will appear on some ballots (in Districts 1, 3, and 5). Only District 5’s Commissioner Al French has drawn a challenger. Her name is Molly Marshall—and she is a solid candidate ready to actually represent the citizens of the West Plains, Grandview, Latah, and the west and southwestern parts of the county.
A vote for Molly Marshall is a vote for building rational infrastructure that addresses the threats of wildfire as well as PFAS contamination of the West Plains aquifer, issues that get short shrift from Mr. French. (Of course, he has recently, recognizing his electoral vulnerability, hurriedly cobbled together development proposals that pretend to address these issues.)
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. For those of us who, besides living in a county, also live within the boundaries of a municipality, city governments are more varied in structure and representation. The City of Spokane, for example, follows the executive, judicial, and legislative model with a “strong” mayor as head of the executive branch, a judicial branch with “district” judges, and a legislative branch consisting of a city council of seven members, two elected from each of three geographic districts, plus the council president, who is elected citywide.
In contrast, the City of Spokane Valley government combines the executive and legislative branch in one seven member city council, each of which members is elected not by district but “at large”—an electoral method that tends toward uniformity of political viewpoint. “At large” voting leaves each voter a little unclear as to which of the councilors, if any, actually represents their interests. (If 51% of the voters citywide are deeply conservative and vote accordingly as a bloc in every election, city government will contain zero dissenting voices.) The mayor of the City of Spokane Valley is elected from among the council members by a majority vote of the council. In this system the mayor chairs council meetings, but otherwise serves a largely ceremonial purpose. The functions of the executive and legislative branches in this system are combined in the city council.
My point remains the same: county government, in the form of the county commission, represents a concentration of legislative and executive power, a narrowing, a bottleneck, within our entire system of government—a bottleneck that deserves the attention of the voters.