Editorial: Help the county write rules for AI’s robots

Published 1:30 am Saturday, January 31, 2026

By The Herald Editorial Board

It’s maybe both ironic and fitting that Snohomish County — in seeking guidance on how 21st-century artificial intelligence tools might be used in helping to manage the county — will turn to an ancient process of democratic rule-making: a civic assembly.

Without going to the extremes of Grecian tunics and stone seats in an amphitheater, later this year an assembly of about 40 county residents will gather for a series of meetings to hear from experts, deliberate on the issues and draft recommendations regarding the county’s use of AI for consideration by the Snohomish County Council; a robots’ rules of order, if you will.

Last July, the county council voted 3-1 to use the civic assembly process to provide some rules for AI’s use in government, taking advantage of the efficiency offered by chatbots and other AI tools but assuring guardrails that protect and enhance transparency, accurate information and analysis and good governance.

Finding common ground regarding new tech: Addressing the concerns and opportunities of AI through this process is a good fit, said County Councilmember Nate Nehring in an interview earlier this month.

“I think everyone agrees it’s a pressing issue, but maybe it’s a less polarizing issue to talk about,” Nehring said, allowing participants to start with fewer preconceived notions and partisan positions.

Finding common ground and collaborative solutions have been a focus for Nehring, a Republican, and his Democratic counterpart Councilmember Jared Mead, who following the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, began conversations between themselves and with civic groups and high school students about how to bridge the growing partisan divide, leading to the creation of their Building Bridges Project. That work got the attention of the Ruckelshaus Center, a joint effort of the University of Washington and Washington State University, a nonprofit resource for collaborative efforts. In turn, the Ruckelshaus Center suggested Mead and Nehring to Civic Genius, a program of the National Civic League, which was looking for opportunities to encourage the use of the civic assembly process.

It’s not that public engagement is absent in government, said Jillian Youngblood, the executive director for Civic Genius and the civic league’s director of deliberative democracy. Practices such as public meetings, comment and public hearings do provide opportunities for citizen participation. But that process doesn’t always result in a sense of public ownership in the decision-making process or its outcomes.

“I personally have run a lot of really crappy public engagement processes, because we’re relying on these models that are 100 years old,” said Youngblood, who is a former Capitol Hill staffer and worked for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “You end up with these frustrating public sessions,” she said, where those participating are “professional citizens,” others who are angry about something or are representing only their personal interests.

The existing process, she said, too often is leaving out working families, young adults and others who can’t take time out of their lives for a four-hour public meeting in a windowless room regarding an issue that they don’t see as relevant to their lives.

Even for those who do make the effort, the outcome can be unsatisfying.

“It’s unclear if you being there has had any impact. And often you have, but there’s no feedback to tell you that you had an impact or perhaps you didn’t,” she said. “That’s an unsatisfying experience.”

A different kind of jury duty: What the civic assembly process resembles most closely is jury duty, Youngblood said. “Fun jury duty.”

But it’s also jury duty that is completely voluntary.

Later in February, county residents will be mailed an invitation to participate in the civic assembly. From those responses, participants will be randomly selected to find a panel of about 40 participants who represent a diverse cross-section of the county regarding gender, race, geographic location and other demographic factors.

Over the course of three weekends in April and May, the assembly will hear a comprehensive briefing on the issues regarding AI from a range of experts, including academics, government officials, advocates and those with relevant knowledge. Following deliberations on the issues, the assembly will draft recommendations that will be considered by the county council — and after public hearings — with a response expected from the council on which proposals it plans or doesn’t plan to implement and why or why not.

The process, Youngblood said, will be transparent, with meetings and all material available to the public. As well, the Federation for Innovation in Democracy, an expert body on civic assemblies, will conduct an independent evaluation of the process and provide technical assistance.

The process has been used worldwide, she said; and led by Civic Genius, it currently is being employed in Raleigh, N.C., to draft a comprehensive plan update, specifically regarding development along the city’s transit routes.

While Civic Genius will help guide the process and gather information and resources, Youngblood emphasized that the discussion and conclusions will reflect the assembly’s work.

“We don’t give them a template. It’s not a form that they fill out,” she said. “They start with a blank page and they construct whatever recommendations they want.”

New subject for a venerable process: Why AI?

Noting recent media coverage regarding the issue of government use of AI — and little in the way of existing rules and conventions about that use — Nehring and Mead suggested the county’s potential use of AI as the subject for the assembly to address.

In late August, public media stations KNKX (88.5 FM) and Cascade PBS (Channel 9) published a two-part report — published in The Herald — that dove into public records from the cities of Everett and Bellingham regarding their use of AI tools, including ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot chatbots. Both cities were found to have used AI for a range of tasks including social media posts, press releases, policy documents, speeches, talking points, contracts, grants and other funding applications and even replies to constituent emails.

But neither city is an outlier. One recent survey found that about 45 percent of state and local governments report using AI, with 39 percent using generative AI chatbots as a routine part of their work.

At a time of increasing work load and strapped budgets for local government, the use of AI is understandable, but is not without concerns.

AI remains a nascent technology with some bugs yet to be worked out. The public media accounts shared the frustrations of one Everett city employee whose prompts to a chatbot delivered inaccurate and fabricated data, a common AI bug called “hallucination.”

And earlier this month, KNKX followed up its earlier report with news that at least one Bellingham city worker gave prompts to an AI tool to steer its responses regarding a software contract away from one vendor and toward another. A $2.7 million contract was awarded to one firm, at a cost $1 million more than that of the losing bid.

Using the existing rules for policy making in the county as a final check — including public meetings, comment and hearings — starting the process of rule-making for the county’s use of AI with a civic assembly of county residents informing themselves and drafting policy is an intriguing and promising undertaking that might prove constructive as a regular practice.

At the same time, better guidance on how and where local governments will use AI is a subject that needs prompt attention.

County residents looking for an opportunity to serve their community should step up and apply for this jury duty.

AI chatbots need not apply.