EVERETT — Dilemmas poured down as fast as the rain as Dave Somers navigated freeway traffic on a water-logged January morning.
There he was, less than a month into his new job as Snohomish County Executive, driving to Seattle to meet with other elected officials to solve the region’s challenges — or at least they’d try.
That afternoon, Somers would join the Sound Transit Board for the first time. Discussions there focused on bringing light rail to Everett to help ease the traffic morass he was now experiencing firsthand — but not for another 15 years or more.
More immediate concerns pressed. Heavy rains threatened flooding on Snohomish County rivers. Somers’ chief of staff called with questions about planning for a new courthouse.
Budget problems. The homeless crisis. Political healing. They’re part of the job that Somers, a former fisheries biologist, took on when he asked voters to elect him to govern in Washington’s third-most-populous county.
“Everyone is looking to the executive about what’s going to happen next,” Somers said. “It’s one issue after another.”
Somers expected the pace to be fast in the executive’s office, given his three-and-a-half terms as a county councilman. With a mix of excitement and exhaustion, he still finds it hard to believe.
“Knowing it in your head and experiencing it are two different things,” he said.
Many changes
“Most people don’t have a clue what we do (in county government) or why we do it,” Somers told a roomful of elected officials in February.
The executive and his staff manage public works, planning and Paine Field. The county’s finance department, human resources and tech staff answer to him. So does the medical examiner, plus parks and emergency management workers. That’s the largest share of county operations outside of the law enforcement functions, which are overseen by other elected officials such as the sheriff, the prosecuting attorney, the county clerk and judges.
Somers gave the executive’s staff a makeover when he took office. Only the front-desk administrative assistant and finance staff remain from his predecessor, John Lovick.
The new executive snapped up about a quarter of the county council staff to become cornerstones in his new administration.
Marcia Isenberg, the council’s chief of staff, is now Somers’ deputy executive. Susan Neely, a former council analyst, is one of his executive directors. Neely focuses on criminal justice issues, which account for three-quarters of county spending.
Somers’ legislative aide and an administrative assistant also came over from the council, while a senior council legislative analyst now heads the Public Works’ Surface Water Management Division.
For his other executive director, Somers hired Kendee Yamaguchi away from Seattle city government. A former assistant attorney general under Bob Ferguson, Yamaguchi also has worked as an assistant director in the state Department of Commerce, in the Clinton White House and in the television news industry.
While Somers left several department heads in place (public works, parks and the medical examiner, for example), he did not retain those Lovick assigned to run planning, emergency management and information services. Some of those vacancies have been filled with interim directors. Somers said he’s in no rush to make more big changes. Only a new HR director is being actively recruited.
“The team’s working really well right now,” Somers said.
A typical Monday begins with a cabinet meeting. More than a dozen managers occupy the executive’s sixth-floor conference room with views from north Everett to Mount Baker.
Somers leads an egalitarian discussion. He occasionally asks questions or thinks through problems out loud.
“I’m kinda concerned,” he said to open one meeting. “Everybody is so cheery this morning. What’s going on that I don’t know about?”
Topics on another day included restrictions on drones near airports, federal disaster grants and improvements on Highway 522.
Tom Teigen, the voluble parks director, got some ribbing for a passionate speech about the parks system.
“When he takes a breath, you have to jump in,” kidded Jason Biermann, the county’s interim emergency manager. “There’s no other way.”
Somers’ dog Hewitt still accompanies him to work. The terrier mix was a regular in council chambers for the past seven years.
Streamlining government has been an early preoccupation. Somers’ administration has looked to King County, the Boeing Co. and Virginia Mason for ideas.
To start, Somers’ administration is retooling the way it handles building permits, aiming for better customer service and efficiency.
“Making a permanent change in philosophy, that’s even harder,” the executive said.
Somers picked Tom Rowe, a long-time manager from the planning department, to expand the effort to other county services.
Changes over the course of a day can be abrupt.
Somers started one Thursday by welcoming a Japanese delegation that’s scouting local mills for a cedar-oil production plant. Next, he met with staff from U.S. Sen. Patty Murray’s office. Then, it was the CEO of the New York company that has an agreement to build a passenger terminal at Paine Field. A conversation with Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson came later. An aerospace-industry banquet took him to Lynnwood that evening.
When not over-booked, Somers might spend a weeknight squeezing off a few rounds from a .22 pistol. The Napa, California, native and champion of environmental causes likes to unwind by participating in NRA Bullseye matches at the Kenmore Shooting Range.
“Team Kumbayah”
During his first weeks as executive, Somers’ ruddy face often displayed a look of mild disbelief.
He sought the job reluctantly. His decision to run against Lovick, a fellow Democrat, turned on worries about the courthouse project and the county budget. Tension grew as then-Deputy Executive Mark Ericks bad-mouthed Somers and other council members in public and in private. It reached the point where Somers and two other councilmen felt threatened. They hired an attorney on an official county contract to examine whether Ericks had broken any workplace rules.
Then in April 2015, Lovick accused Somers of making a racist joke about Native Americans while at a leadership breakfast with the Tulalip Tribes. Somers was upset. He worked 18 years as a biologist for Tulalip tribal government and knows many leaders there on a first-name basis. He said Lovick misunderstood a reference to a traditional song.
Leaders from the tribe were uncomfortable about being pulled into the dispute. They said they took no offense at Somers’ statement.
Somers raised more than twice as much campaign money as Lovick, despite waiting until May to get into the race. He won by nearly 14 percentage points.
Councilman Brian Sullivan, who backed Lovick and narrowly won re-election himself, is ready to shift from politics to policy. He and Somers have spoken regularly this year in an attempt to improve the atmosphere in county government.
“The campaign’s over and it’s time to put those differences aside and work together,” Sullivan said. “And I think Dave will do that.”
Even so, Sullivan apparently couldn’t resist taking a jab at the new executive during a March 2 hearing. It was over the lack of a recommendation from the executive on an incentive program for development credits. Where was Somers on the issue?
“I’m just wondering if he has a disagreement with something in here or if he supports it wholeheartedly?” Sullivan asked. “There’s no recommendation. That’s not very good direction for us, for team Kumbayah, if we don’t get that going.”
Sullivan worked for the first three county executives: Willis Tucker, Bob Drewel and Aaron Reardon.
“I’m not new to this party,” Sullivan said. “It always takes time for an administration to get its rhythm.”
The council has been short-handed since Somers’ departure at the end of 2015. Somers and Sullivan are looking for stability from state Rep. Hans Dunshee when he joins the council full time. Both have worked closely with the Snohomish Democrat in the past.
“There are a lot of decisions to make and Hans has never shied away from difficult decisions,” Sullivan said.
Down to business
Somers stepped into office knowing he had to identify $1.4 million in cuts to balance the budget. It’s a task he assigned himself while drafting the county’s 2016 spending plan as chairman of the council. He set a deadline of the end of March to make recommendations.
Late last week, the executive’s office gathered up plans from department heads and other county elected officials that detail options for reaching the necessary spending reductions. Most of the departments plan to meet the goals by belt-tightening, such as not filling vacant positions. Specifics were just being reviewed late last week.
Somers’ skills at managing information are getting noticed.
“We as a council are enjoying a better relationship with the executive’s office,” said Council Chairman Terry Ryan, who was an ally of Somers on the council. “He has the advantage of having been on the council. He has the advantage of knowing that it’s in the interest of the executive to stay in contact with the council, instead of springing surprises on them.”
Somers and the council must soon turn their attention to another vexing financial question: replacing the county courthouse.
“That issue is fundamental to everything else we do,” Somers said.
Plans to build an eight-story justice building across the street from the county’s downtown Everett campus were scrapped last summer.
Isenberg, the deputy executive, is heading up a committee composed of judges and other officials who will come up with new concepts for a courthouse building. They have until June 30 to present options to the County Council.
“We’re trying to find a smaller, more modest project that will meet the needs,” Ryan said. “It certainly will not be as big of a building or project that was proposed by the previous executive.”
Looking outward
As Somers settles in, he has looked to Drewel’s example for guidance.
In his three terms as executive, Drewel excelled at winning policy battles that extended far beyond the county line. He was instrumental in fending off attempts to start a regional airport in Snohomish County and pushed instead for a third runway at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
Drewel lobbied for the creation of Sound Transit, then helped craft a proposal that Snohomish County voters would support. He and his allies are still working to get light rail to Everett, as promised 20 years ago.
Drewel’s standing continued to benefit the county after he left office. He took the helm of the Puget Sound Regional Council, where local officials work on infrastructure and growth plans for a four-county region. Drewel more recently has played official roles setting up the new WSU branch campus in north Everett.
Snohomish County’s reputation suffered during the tenure of Aaron Reardon, who followed Drewel as executive.
Reardon resigned in 2013, after nearly a decade of conflicts and tawdry headlines. His planning director pleaded guilty to a drunken sexual assault against a building-industry lobbyist on a golf course. Revelations surfaced about botched county personnel investigations.
Somers got dragged into the turmoil when a woman then employed as a county social worker approached him to report she had accompanied Reardon on out-of-town county business trips during a lengthy affair. Somers took the concerns straight to prosecutors.
Somers soon became a target of social media attacks and public records requests carried out under pseudonyms by Kevin Hulten, a junior aide in Reardon’s office. Prosecuting Attorney Mark Roe and other members of his staff also were objects of Hulten’s wrath.
Reardon resigned after The Daily Herald unmasked Hulten’s clandestine activities. In Reardon’s final months, the aide erased data from a computer that detectives were seeking as part of a criminal investigation into whether any social media attacks or public records requests amounted to harassment or other misconduct. He later pleaded guilty to evidence tampering.
The community looked to Lovick, then sheriff, to set things right after Reardon left town.
Lovick’s positive outlook helped him achieve some initial success in restoring confidence in county government.
His administration also was confronted with the worst catastrophe in Snohomish County history when a mudslide killed 43 people near Oso on March 22, 2014. The county secured millions in state and federal grants. Through months of toil, search teams managed to find every victim, without any of the searchers suffering serious injury.
After the slide, Somers was alone among county leaders in pushing to re-write land-use rules. Other than temporary construction bans around the slide area, however, building rules remained mostly unchanged.
Lovick won election to a special one-year term in 2014, but clashes between his staff and the council intensified. Insiders grumbled about the atmosphere growing even more poisonous than under Reardon.
Through it all, the county lost visibility on regional issues. That included Sound Transit, where Everett leaders have waged an all-out fight to ensure that a future light-rail system would serve the Boeing Co.’s Everett plant and Paine Field.
Redmond Mayor John Marchione is one of 10 officials from King County on Sound Transit’s 18-member board.
“I’ve worked more with Everett Mayor (Ray) Stephanson and Councilman Paul Roberts in my eight years as mayor than the sitting (Snohomish) County executive,” Marchione said. “It’s been more Everett-driven.”
“Maybe I just didn’t hang out in the same circles as the other guys,” he said.
When elected executive, Somers assumed one of Snohomish County’s three spots on Sound Transit’s board. Marchione, who knows him from working on the Puget Sound Regional Council, offered praise for rising above parochial thinking.
“The Puget Sound region needs to cooperate and collaborate to be competitive in the world market,” Marchione said.
“Regional leaders like Dave Somers help make that possible. It shouldn’t be Everett competing with Redmond. It should be the Puget Sound region competing with Austin, Texas, Boston, Massachusetts, and South Korea — three examples of competitors to the Puget Sound area.”
That regional cooperation will be put to the test as Sound Transit leaders jostle for light-rail funding in a measure targeted for the November ballot.
A $50 billion plan released March 25 has light rail not reaching Everett until 2041. Another option considered would get there via I-5, leaving out Paine Field and the Boeing plant. Many leaders in King County have been more preoccupied with getting light rail to the residential neighborhoods of West Seattle and Ballard.
Somers tried to make the case for a Paine Field focus to King County Executive Dow Constantine, who serves as Sound Transit’s chairman.
“It’s amazing to me,” he said. “We’re the No. 1 manufacturing center in the state. Bypassing that doesn’t make any sense.”
Long days ahead
As a councilman, Somers defined his career through mastery at policymaking, not by running large organizations. But that’s where he is now, atop a bureaucracy with some 2,800 workers and an annual operating budget of $230 million.
The path started in 1972, when he moved to Seattle to transfer to the University of Washington.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in fisheries science. Afterward he went to work at Verlot ranger station near Granite Falls and later as a Tulalip fisheries biologist. He won election to the County Council in 1997.
Somers and his wife, Elaine, have lived on 15 acres near Monroe since 1986.
Their dining-room table looks out to a platform where Somers scatters birdseed in the morning. He jokes that watching the birds and squirrels feast is like natural television.
The January day he drove to Seattle started at 5:30 a.m., with a dog walk and then a drive into Everett.
It was 4 p.m. by the time he returned from Seattle, too tired for the usual Thursday-night target practice at the Kenmore Shooting Range. Somers’ week wasn’t over. And his job was just beginning.
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465; nhaglund@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @NWhaglund.
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