Seattle-Style Cronyism Makes Dow Constantine the $6 Million Man

Imagine you need to choose a CEO for a large transportation company currently serving over 100,000 people daily. The company is undertaking a 30-year, multi-billion-dollar construction project to increase the number of markets and potentially serve more riders.

Yet there are serious financial problems within the company. Cost overruns and time delays have already more than doubled the construction budget and the current schedule is for completion at least 15 years later than originally promised. Meanwhile, low ridership and a poor fare collection system have resulted in revenue totals that are just 10% of what was originally projected – causing non-riding taxpayers to pay even higher taxes for the light rail system.

A 2022 Washington Policy Center study found that due to cost overruns and a faulty fare collection process, the taxpayers pay $179 and passengers pay two dollars for every trip taken on Sound Transit. Alaska Airlines can fly a person to San Diego and back cheaper than Sound Transit can provide a round trip between Downtown and the U District.

Common sense would dictate that you would select the new CEO based on their successful experience in fiscal management, reducing cost overruns, and increasing ridership.

Unfortunately, this real example did not come from the common sense world, it came from King County  where fiscal responsibility of the taxpayers’ money lags far behind serving the wishes of like-minded progressive  friends and family members.

So, when the Board of Sound Transit was tasked with finding a new CEO, they didn’t select someone the agency truly needs, someone with strong fiscal management experience, instead they choose a career politician (and long-time Sound Transit Board Member) – 63-year-old King County Executive Dow Constantine.

According to state law, the King County Executive is responsible for appointing the 10 members who represent the county on the Sound Transit Board – the other eight members come from Pierce and Snohomish Counties. Thus, Constantine hand-selected a majority of the board members who offered him the $450,000 annual base salary position.

Almost immediately, accusations of “cronyism” (i.e. appointing a friend/colleague to a job despite not being qualified) and “pension padding” were being mentioned in the media.

[un]Divided host Brandi Kruise stated, “Even if he were the most qualified person on the planet, to be the CEO of Sound Transit, it would be the most corrupt decision in the world.”

Spokesperson for the liberal special interest group Seattle Subway said, “Selecting any current member of the board would be a massive breach of ethical standards.”

Fellow Democrat (and a candidate for King County Executive) King County Assessor John Wilson was critical of the appointment stating, “This is a glaring example of insiders helping insiders. This fuels the public skepticism about whether Sound Transit really cares about the public.”

When asked about the appearance of cronyism to receive such a high paying job, Constantine acted as if he were making a huge sacrifice by accepting “the very bottom of the pay scale that they were offering.”  This “very bottom’ is $450,000 a year, which is in the top 2% of all U.S. salaries.

By the end of his four-year contract, when annual salary increases and bonuses are added, Constantine will make well over $600,000 per year.

The salary increase will provide Constantine with immediate financial benefits, but more importantly it will significantly enhance his pension. Typically, government retirees’ pensions are calculated at 2% per year of the employee’s highest salary. Constantine first held an elected office in the Washington Legislature in 1997. His contract with Sound Transit extends to 2029, giving him 32 years for his pension calculations.

Multiplying the 32 years of service by 2% equals 64%. With a top salary of $600,000, taxpayers will provide Constantine an annual pension of-$384.000 a year!

As county executive, he made approximately $250,000 a year. In retirement, Constantine’s pension will actually be a 54% increase from his current executive salary when he retires from Sound Transit. (Note: if he retired after the conclusion of his current term at the end of this year he would have 28 years of government service.  His annual pension would be $140,000. His new pension benefits are a $244,000 increase.)

The average life expectancy of a U.S. male who is currently 63 years old is another 20 years. If Constantine lives the statistical average, then his additional pension benefits will cost taxpayers $4,880,000. This money will be allocated to one person’s pension rather than being spent on programs for homelessness, street improvements, or public safety.

This act of greedy cronyism is due to the cozy relationship between Dow Constantine and the members he handpicked for the Sound Transit Board. The politicians prosper while our taxes go up.

While the cronyism and pay increase are bad enough, the real question is, does Dow Constantine have the leadership ability to end the massive overspending, increase fare revenue, and complete the projects on time?

There is nothing in Constantine’s record to demonstrate that he will improve these issues:

• Surprisingly, he had no estimate for how much money his administration had spent on homelessness since he declared it an emergency in 2015. Despite spending billions, homelessness has increased 63.3%, and our region has more chronic homelessness than any place in the country.
• He refused to set any goal for the deficient King County Regional Homelessness Authority to meet in order for the public to continue to fund its efforts.
• He ignores scientific data that reveals that 2/3 of those who are homeless have addiction and mental health issues. Instead of focusing on treatment, he has built a huge housing bureaucracy where he gives active addicts housing at a public cost of more than $330,000 per person (before even adding the cost of the bureaucracy).
• His expensive long-term carbon reduction plan missed its target by 96%!
• Despite the county budget more than doubling (from $4.9 billion to $10.2 billion) since Constantine became executive, he failed to maintain the county’s sewage system. This failure caused numerous sewage leaks into Puget Sound, damaging the habitat of Orca whales and forcing the state to fine King County for failure “to correct a years-long pattern.”
• His failure to keep King County-Metro buses safe for passengers and drivers has resulted in riders refusing to come back to Metro buses after the pandemic. Buses have nearly 40% fewer riders (123 million annual riders in 2019 compared to just 73 million reported last year). If Constantine can’t keep Metro buses safe than how can we expect that he will be able to improve public safety on Sound Transit’s trains/buses?
•  Sound Transit’s long media release on Constantine’s appointment lists no specific achievement for Constantine during his 16 years as county executive. Only vague terms such as “his commitment to making Martin Luther King County a welcoming community” are used. The word “homelessness” is never used.

The strong appearance of cronyism and pension padding are enough for most people to say the Sound Transit Board should not offer Constantine the Sound Transit job. Given that his record shows no experience in properly managing taxpayer funds or improving mass transit, it would have been fiscally responsible for the Sound Transit Board to consider candidates beyond their own board members for the CEO position.