The Dow Constantine Legacy

It has been nearly six months since then King County Executive Dow Constantine was handed $6 million by his cronies on the Sound Transit Board of Directors to lead its financially troubled organization.  Yet his desire to recklessly and carelessly spend taxpayers’ money (while constantly demanding more) at the county still lives on.

Remember at the end of 2024, Constantine could not provide ChangeWA with even a rough estimate as to how much taxpayer money he had spent (either annually or combined) on homelessness.  This after a declaring homelessness an “emergency” a decade earlier. We do know Constantine spent nearly a half-billion dollars to buy hotels to warehouse active drug addicts and untreated mental ill individuals around the county – at a cost of more than $330,000 per unit.

Now we have learnt that his Department of Community and Human Services was finally audited, and it was revealed that only 1% of its expenditures had been reviewed (33% is required by law) and that massive fraud is currently taking place.

After 16 years of Constantine’s careless management, it is very likely that DCHS is not the only county agencies with lax oversight and is ripe for fraud.  The entire county needs to be investigated by outside auditors.

Constantine is a special interest group’s dream politician.  He keeps handing them OUR money, and then he doesn’t care how they spend it or if they get results. Then he eagerly increases their payments the next year.