Why Is Dow Constantine Being Rewarded After a Decade of Failure in King County?

Among the regular stream of meaningless partisan statements issued by Governor Bob Ferguson’s communications team was one of last week which has received almost no attention from the local press. It is significant because it reveals the lack of accountability by our political leaders, and it helps explain why the Seattle/King County region and our state continue to plummet in national rankings due to poor government performance.

On September 29, Gov. Ferguson’s office announced that Sound Transit CEO Dow Constantine will join the 11-member University of Washington Board of Regents.

What makes Dow Constantine an acceptable selection to lead the state’s premier public university?

The only reasons given in the press release are that he and members of his family attended the school and that he is “an avid skier, music enthusiast and Husky football fan.” This seems like a very low bar for someone who is supposed to guide one of the nations’ top universities and a major economic engine of our state.

Maybe the writers of the media release chose to ignore accomplishments for Constantine’s record has been a huge disappointment.

Here is a quick look at Constantine’s “accomplishments” as King County Executive.

• After declaring homelessness an emergency in 2015, the county’s homeless population has grown 68% in a decade (from approximately 10,000 to over 16,800), rising every year. Also, as homelessness increases, so do the number of homeless deaths.
• Constantine was unable to provide any estimate as to how much taxpayer money he authorized to be spent on homelessness for any year he led the county. We do know he spent more than $330,000 per unit to buy 15 hotels (at a cost of nearly a half-billion dollars) to warehouse homeless individuals, regardless of whether they are active in drug/alcohol addiction or have untreated mental issues.
• He was the driving force behind the dysfunctional and ineffective King County Regional Homelessness Authority that has failed at everything it has attempted. After a nationwide search, recruiters could only find one person willing to be interviewed to be KCRHA’s CEO despite the $300,000+ salary and amazing benefits.
• He ignored scientific data that revealed more than 75% of the homeless suffer from addiction and/or mental health issues, then declared the only reason a person is homeless is due to housing shortage (for which his only strategy is to build more public housing that the government controls). His selection to lead the county’s homelessness program resigned after she used public funds to hire a stripper to perform at a homelessness conference.
• Before he fled his Executive position to receive the $6 million pay package from Sound Transit (in a blatant act of cronyism), he left behind a record-breaking $150 million deficit.
• His Public Health Department hands out free drug tools (without mention of treatment options) to addicts as the fentanyl crises caused a record number of drug overdose deaths.
• A recent audit has found that his Department of Community and Human Services was so badly mismanaged that only 1% of all funds have proper documentation and that “massive fraud has likely taken place” with millions of taxpayer dollars.
• Ridership is slow to return on Metro-King County Transit, which is 64% of what it was prior to the pandemic. This is one of the worst return rates in the country, primarily due to safety concerns and open drug use.
• His expensive climate policies have only met 4% of their stated goal.
• The King County Wastewater Treatment Division is so poorly mismanaged that raw sewage continues to spill into Puget Sound damaging vital habitats. The State Department of Ecology regularly fines the county (which taxpayers pay) for failing to fix the problems.
• Constantine removed the King County Sheriff from being accountable to the voters and placed law enforcement under the control of politicians like himself, leading to many conflicts with local communities.
• The King County budget grew more than 100% in the 15 years while Constantine was Executive – from $5 billion in 2010 to more than $10.2 billion in 2025.

By no stretch of the imagination is this an acceptable record – especially on the most dominate issue of our time, homelessness, which the county executive leads the region’s efforts.

This list demonstrates that to Governor Ferguson (and those who appointed Constantine to lead Sound Transit), the only “accomplishment” they appear to care about is the last one – how large did Constantine make the county government and how much money did he send to ineffective (and likely fraudulent) progressive special interest groups.

This prioritization of special interest groups’ desires over the needs of the public/taxpayers is a significant reason why so many government programs fail (while government gets bigger) and why Seattle/King County and Washington State continue to plummet in national rankings.