Constantine trimmed budgets, yet some blame him for rise in spending

When the Metropolitan King County Council began deliberations on the 2007 budget, the man leading that process gave staffers signs to post on their office doors and windows: "Spend less, save more."

It's a commitment Dow Constantine says he kept, whacking $3 million from County Executive Ron Sims' proposed budget and putting more money into reserves.

Now, as a candidate for county executive in a terrible budget year, Constantine calls himself "a no-nonsense reformer." He claims a record of financial restraint, focus on efficiency and spending cuts.

It's a far different description from the one offered by his opponent, Susan Hutchison, who paints him as a free-spending incumbent who doesn't deserve higher office because he allowed the cost of government to spiral out of control.

A central question before voters Nov. 3 is whether Constantine, a council member for nearly eight years, is to blame for a budget crisis so severe that parks may be closed, animal shelters shuttered, 367 jobs eliminated and Metro bus fares raised.

"I'm the one with the experience to bring the government through this period of transition and create real reform," Constantine said the night of the primary.

County Councilmember Reagan Dunn scoffs at Constantine's portrayal of himself as a reformer. "That's like saying Joseph Stalin is a pacifist. He's not a reformer. He's an insider. He's a classic insider. ... There's not a tax increase that Dow has met that he hasn't liked."

Others in county government say Constantine was a moderating influence who saw "the big picture" in county finances during his six years on the council's budget leadership team.

Nickels aide, successor

After graduating from the University of Washington law school, Constantine practiced law, then worked as an aide to County Councilmember Greg Nickels, and in 1996 was elected to the state House.

He was a 40-year-old state senator when the County Council appointed him to replace Nickels, who had been elected mayor.

Constantine had just joined the council in 2002 when he was one of two Democrats named to the team charged with reviewing and revising Sims' proposed budget.

The team removed $6 million from the jail budget and shifted some of the money into programs that move nonviolent defendants out of jail and into treatment for mental disorders, alcoholism and drug addictions.

After the council voted 12-1 for the revised budget — and Sims grudgingly signed it — the jail guards union took revenge by sponsoring a county charter amendment that downsized the council from 13 members to nine.

Constantine didn't come up with the idea of shifting money from jails to treatment — Councilmember Larry Gossett was the prime mover — but he supported it as a way of slowing the county's skyrocketing criminal-justice costs and helping troubled people turn their lives around.

The council also agreed to Constantine's call for the executive to set goals for each department and report annually on progress toward reaching those goals. That unglamorous call for "performance measures" was a first step in a frustratingly slow process of trying to make government more efficient, Constantine said.

In 2006, his fifth year on the council, he chaired the budget process.

Former county economist Chris Bushnell said Constantine was "one of the most fiscally responsible members of the council" because he heeded warnings from the executive branch that some council-proposed budget add-ons could lead to future deficits.

"Many council members didn't want to hear about it and wouldn't really engage on the substance of those concerns," said Bushnell, who is supporting Constantine. "Dow was very consistent both in listening to those concerns and then working to moderate the spending to bring it down to more sustainable levels."

Despite deep budget cuts made first during the dot-com bust and then during the current recession, county spending increased much of this decade, propelled largely by employee wages and benefits. Between 2002 and 2009, the general fund rose by about 23 percent to $647 million.

Former County Councilmember and now-state Attorney General Rob McKenna blames Constantine for the run-up in spending and the desperate cutting that's taking place now. King County, McKenna said, is "the most expensive government in the state, pound for pound, and they have systematically refused to address their cost structures for many, many years."

McKenna, who supports Hutchison, said he suggested requiring county employees to pay part of their health-care premiums. "This is what every teacher, every state employee in the state does. Dow and Ron Sims and some of their colleagues wouldn't hear of it," he said.

Constantine said he doesn't recall McKenna suggesting to him that employees pay part of their premiums.

Councilmember Bob Ferguson said it's "silly" for McKenna and Hutchison to blame Constantine for the shortfall, noting that the budget Constantine managed in 2006 was adopted by a 9-0 vote.

"Every Republican and every Democrat voted for that budget. You've got to point to every single council member, which would include supporters of her [Hutchison] as well as supporters of Dow, to say we're all culpable. It's the political season. I understand what she's doing."

Wonkish but direct

Constantine is "one of the more policy-wonky people" on the council and "doesn't suffer fools well," said Ryan Bayne, a former council and executive staffer.

"He's straight-up and if he doesn't like your idea, he tells you he doesn't like it," former Councilmember Carolyn Edmonds said.

Usually calm and articulate, he occasionally has startled colleagues with flashes of temper. As a memento of the 2006 budget process, staff and members gave him the framed pieces of a reading light he broke when he angrily slammed a heavy notebook on the dais.

"He's a bulldog advocate for his district," as Edmonds puts it — sometimes alienating other council members.

Constantine got a ferry district established, and in 2007 won his colleagues' votes for a property tax to fund passenger ferries connecting Vashon Island and West Seattle with downtown Seattle. He denies claims he threatened to scuttle a flood-control tax to assure passage of the ferry tax.

He also has fought for a decade against expansion of a sand-and-gravel mine on the shore of Maury Island.

Until this executive campaign, Constantine may have been most widely known for moving Sims' critical-areas ordinance through the council.

The most controversial provision, a requirement that owners of large properties leave 65 percent of their land in native vegetation, was struck down by the state Court of Appeals. Some people in rural parts of the county, where anger over the law runs deep, still call him "Chairman Dow."

But with the county facing a $56 million general-fund shortfall next year, after cutting $93 million this year, his influence over the budget has become a bigger campaign issue.

Constantine claims "a track record of reform." One reform he spearheaded, improving oversight of the $1.8 billion Brightwater sewage plant and other big construction projects, was lauded this year by the state Auditor's Office in an otherwise scathing report.

This year the council adopted his proposals for a hiring freeze and protection of employee whistle-blowers.

Saying the county has failed to provide humane care at its animal shelters, he has pushed for the county to get out of the business.

Constantine has laid off two council managers, wants nonunion employees earning more than $60,000 a year to begin paying a share of their health-care premiums, and proposes giving incentives to workers who shift from a costlier health plan to less-expensive Group Health coverage.

But the support Constantine has received from organized labor has led Hutchison to question whether he can take on their members' "gold-plated" benefits.

"His election will be bought and paid for by the unions," she said, citing the more than $115,000 spent by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and other unions supporting Constantine or attacking his opponents in the primary.

When the SEIU asked in an endorsement questionnaire whether he would fight efforts to shift health-care costs to employees, Constantine wrote, "I strongly support the current plan for represented employees and will fight rollbacks of those agreements."

Constantine said in interviews he would look for ways to cut health-care costs before trying to renegotiate agreements that expire at the end of 2012.

"It's simply disingenuous for a candidate to say that they can unilaterally reopen contracts. They can't," he said. "The important thing is how to save money, notwithstanding that reality."

Even as he points to his efforts to contain costs, Constantine says the county's continuing budget problems are largely the result of state laws that limit annual increases in property-tax collections to 1 percent a year and that don't give the county the authority cities have to levy a utility tax to pay for local services.

Surprisingly, one person who agrees the problem is primarily one of inadequate revenues is Chris Vance, a former County Council member and former state Republican Party chairman, now a lobbyist for county corrections officers.

Most workers paid from the county's general fund are involved in law enforcement, jails or courts, Vance said. Sheriff's deputies and jail guards have a legal right to binding arbitration — and both groups recently got big raises, deputies through negotiation, guards through arbitration.

"The revenue crisis has not been caused by anybody on the County Council," said Vance, who isn't working for either candidate. "You can legitimately go back in the past and criticize the spending decisions of King County Council members, but not the past couple-three years, because they've just been trying to keep the basic functions of government going. ...

"The bottom has just fallen out of the county's revenue stream."

Constantine, asked to sum up what it is to be a reformer, said this: "My philosophy is captured in the direction I gave to our staff when I became the budget chair: Spend less, save more."

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com