Everett, Wash.
Published: Monday, January 14, 2008

County may add diversity manager

The County Council proposes hiring someone to recruit minority workers and business owners for government jobs, contracts.

By Jeff Switzer
Herald Writer

 A push to make Snohomish County government more diverse and friendly to minorities died in a controversial vote last year, but is being revived by the County Council.

Like last year, advocates for minority groups are paying close attention -- and say they have higher expectations that the County Council will vote their way.

The council is proposing to hire a point person on diversity -- a community inclusion manager -- for County Executive Aaron Reardon's office to help recruit minority workers into county government and hire more minority-owned businesses for county contracts.

The idea was proposed in 2006 by Reardon, but the County Council later froze the money and killed the position in a 3-2 vote. Democrat Kirke Sievers sided with Republicans John Koster and Gary Nelson to defeat the proposal.

Minority leaders, who lobbied heavily for the position, were disappointed and in some cases offended by the council decision.

As proposed last year, the inclusion manager would work with ethnic minority groups and businesses owned by minorities or women to better connect them to county government job opportunities and contracts.

The idea again has people's attention, said Janice Greene, an executive board member for the Snohomish County chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

"The demographics of the community have changed dramatically over the last two years," she said. "I think that this is a position that needs to be filled, and the county realizes that. I fully expect that they'll support it this time."

Political fortunes shifted Reardon's way when two new Democrats, Brian Sullivan and Mike Cooper, were elected to the council in November. They replaced Nelson and Sievers, who were not allowed to run again for the council because of term limits.

The move cemented the council's 4-1 Democratic majority.

"There's been a little change in the council and I think we ought to bring it back," said County Councilman Dave Gossett, who supported the proposal last year. "I don't anticipate it failing."

It was frustrating to watch the council vote down the proposal last year, Cooper said.

"It was a slap in the face to the people of Snohomish County to take that kind of vote," Cooper said. "Given the growth in the diversity of our county, we need a position like that. We're way too diverse of a county to not have one.

"I was waiting to get here so I could vote for it."

The county's equal employment opportunity investigator watches for discrimination, but the new position would cast a broader net in hiring practices and contracts.

"If major corporations like Starbucks, Boeing and Microsoft think it's important to have an inclusion manager, I think government should follow a similar process," said Superior Court Judge Eric Lucas, Snohomish County's NAACP president.

Gossett expects some debate about the job description and goals for the position.

"We're not talking about setting quotas," Gossett said. Instead, the county would "aggressively recruit so the makeup of the county workforce more accurately reflects the actual makeup of the county."

An estimated 82 percent of the people in Snohomish County are white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2005 American Community Survey. Another 7.6 percent are Asian, 6.3 percent are Hispanic and 1.8 percent are black or African American.

As of October 2006, about 8 percent of county government's 2,715 employees were minorities or people of color. More recent figures were not immediately available.

Money wasn't set aside in the budget for the position this year. The council proposes using about $74,000 of county funds to cover the $55,000 salary and benefits.

"The communities of color feel very strongly about this position," Reardon said. "We're a growing county. We're a diversifying county. This is one more step to making government more accessible and increasing our competitiveness."



Reporter Jeff Switzer: 425-339-3452 or jswitzer@heraldnet.com.
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