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SNOHOMISH COUNTY—In Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers’ proposed 2025 Biennial Budget, he said funds are tight for the county driven by inflation, rapid population growth, and COVID relief funds hitting the end of their limits. But a recent county audit, conducted on both Executive and Council Office staffing operations, may point to another contributing factor – “duplicative” and “overlapping” staff positions.

While the number of core staffing positions has remained relatively the same at approximately 13 positions, the growth observed by this audit was largely due to the creation (or expansion) of three new programs within the office; Economic Development, Social Justice, and Recovery and Resilience.

As it stands these three offices are not currently codified under statute as offices which would, according to auditor George Skiles, Partner at Sjoberg-Evanshenk Consulting, create a level of sustainability over time. Because of this he recommended the County find permanent homes for these new creations in other existing offices.

Skiles first worked with the county back in 2014 and has completed 10 projects since including a couple county-wide risk assessments. The standards that he upholds when conducting these audits are the standards of the Comptroller General of the United States, a President fulfilled position affirmed by both the Senate and the House.

The Economic Development program was created in 2023 by the County Council where they could assign economic development work. However, the audit found that the current practice of housing economic development programs within the Executive’s Office is inconsistent with the existing code.

The Recovery and Resilience, which has always been intended to be a temporary department in nature, will dissolve at some point and its records will need to be kept somewhere – finance being the most logical choice according to the county. The audit recommended the transfer of records to finance be done sooner rather than later to facilitate this process and prepare for a potential post-department audit.

As for Social Justice, the audit found an overlap of responsibilities done here and the existing Office of Human Resources and Human Services Departments. The audit recommended a transfer of administrative work to these departments would be more efficient and keep up with county code.

The audit found that the Office of Social Justice had many overlapping or “duplicative” functions with existing programs and offices. For example, the administration of grant and micro grants as well as human resource-related matters.

In 2021 the county council voted to approve two full-time FTE positions for the Office of Social Justice and one of the those approving votes was then-County Councilwoman Stephanie Wright (who also wished to allocate $500,000 of the county’s ARPS dollars into the office). Wright secured one of those positions, Government Affairs, shortly after.

In 2022 the county discussed adding another position to the Office of Social Justice dedicated to communication, in order to better coordinate with nonprofits and community partners in dishing out more than $2 million in ARPA and CARES Act dollars to facilitate projects. Three weeks later Senator Marko Liias was hired for that position.

This was the second time Sen. Liias has held a government job in addition to his Senate seat. In 2018 he was let go of his Policy Analyst position at the City of Mukilteo after the position was effectively cut.

Controversy swirled around that time surrounding then Mukilteo Mayor Jennifer Gregerson, who Liias assisted in her Mayoral campaign, placing him in the role as well as the position’s vague job description. Some members of the media and public called Gregerson’s appointment of Liias an act of “cronyism.” This position paid about $65,000 a year.

Sen. Liias’ County position pays about $120,000 annually despite him filing an income of $50,000 to $99,000 from the County in his F1 financial reports with the Washington Public Disclosure Commission (PDC).

After Liias was hired by the County another OSJ position needed to be made to assist the two existing Legislative Analyst positions, one of which is held by former Snohomish County Sheriff Ty Trenary, pays $166,000 annually, and has administered around 40 micro grants to nonprofits and organizations in the amount of roughly $5,000 each. Micro grants do not require PA audits.

Trenary also owns a home in Arizona sparking controversy whether he is even a Snohomish County resident. The Lynnwood Times is currently investigating whether or not this is the case.

The County’s Human Services Department already has a team who specializes in grant writing. According to Indeed these positions pay anywhere between $65,000 and $80,000 annually – about $100,000 less than Trenary’s position in the OSJ which essentially has the same role.

On Wednesday, November 13, George Skiles presented the findings of this performance audit to the County Council during its General Legislative Session.

The audit evaluated the effectiveness and efficiencies of the staffing structure of both the Council Office and the Executive’s Office by reviewing the organization structures of both, including; how staff are aligned with different organizational units, evaluating staffing trends over the last 10 years, reviewing staff job descriptions, reporting relations between both offices, the county charter and county code, and conducting benchmarking among other similarly formed counties within the state of Washington.

Overall, the County Council’s staffing structure has been stable over the last decade, the audit found, with very little movement remaining at nearly 25 FTE’s over the entire period and with positions generally falling within the same organizational units during that time.

When compared to other similarly structured counties in Washington, Snohomish County was found to be consistent albeit relatively lean by comparison.

The audit also found that the Council Office was neither understaffed nor over staffed to carry out the primary responsibilities of the council.

It did, however, identify that both neighboring King and Pierce counties incorporate into their offices resources that could be dedicated to proactive policy analysis as well as in-house council both of which could serve as a resource to council, Skiles noted, which is highlighted in the audit’s list of recommendations.

In the next finding the audit identified instances in which changes in position and compensation were initiated through the budget process and not through the procedures established by the Department of Human Resources. Though the audit focused on the Council and Executive Offices, and found issues with both, it found that this is a common issue found throughout county departments.

This included reclassifying positions from one job to another without giving Human Resources an opportunity to review the expectations of the new job via job description, evaluating market compensation, and setting up a position and compensation that ensures pay aligns with the responsibilities, and maintains pay equity among other positions throughout the county.

Some examples of this are the job titled “Executive Management Analyst Senior” changing to “Process Improvement Special Project Director” and then to “Policy Advisor Executive”, between 2021 and 2023. A new position was then created titled Executive Management Analyst Senior to replace the role that was reclassified and, though it was authorized through the budget process, this new position nor the prior were requested to be reviewed by Human Resources.

The Human Resource Policy Advisor position, which was created in 2021, was also later converted to a Policy Advisor-Executive to lead the Office of Social Justice but without a job description. A job description was not created for this position until three years later.

“Three years is a very long time for that to occur,” said Skiles. “Part of [a job description] is firmly defining what a position is to establish market compensation for that position, the other side of it is a job description really outlines the responsibility of a position. Without that, that hinders accountability.”

And yet another example is the office reclassifying an “Administrative Assistant” position to the position of “Division Manager” – which was a placeholder Emergency Management classification in 2021 to act as the Communication and Outreach Manager though September 2024. This position is paid approximately $124,000 a year and also did not have a job description until October 2024.

At the time the Administrative Assistant position was changed to Emergency Management an existing position titled Emergency Management already existed within the Executive’s Office.

When the Council voted to approve this FTE position it was presented as a communications position but did not have a job description. This is the same position held by Senator Marko Liias.

Though reclassifying job positions – often to pay a higher salary – is not exactly uncommon for similar governments to Snohomish County, it’s paramount that human resources review the reclassifications, Skiles said, to offer an “independent perspective” on whether the staff member filling the role has higher qualifications than the job description or are operating at a higher capacity than the job description in order to justify the salary increase.

“They’re essentially the arbiter between what a department might want to do and the responsibility of the county to ensure equity among positions and among departments and how positions are treated,” said Skiles.

These reclassifications took place a total of 73 times throughout the county within the scope of the audit. Skiles noted that he could not pass a judgement on whether or not the Human Resource Department would have approved these positions had the reclassifications undergone proper due process, but he said in 73 cases there is a high likelihood that not all of them would have been approved.

The audit also observed cases in which employees received increases in pay without going through the standard Special American Work Review process.

“In such cases process is important and initiating such changes without human resources review in advance can result in increased costs and unequal treatment of the county’s workforce,” said Skiles.

Lastly, the audit found opportunities to improve performance measurement both as it relates to the growing programs within the office and all county positions. One of these recommendations is to enforce a policy that would protect positions from carrying out their work in an objective and partisan-free manner, which both offices currently lack.

During Council’s Public Hearing following its General Legislative Session council discussed an amendment brought forth by Council President Jared Mead. If approved this amendment would save the County approximately $1.3 million dollars.

When asked on her thoughts of Mead’s proposal to implement the audit findings, Councilwoman Meghan Dunn told the Lynnwood Times that the “proposed amendment to cut the Executive department misconstrues findings from a recent audit to justify the elimination of targeted positions, programs, and funding for our Office of Social Justice and the investments that they provide to community groups. These employees and investments bring great value to our county, and we shouldn’t make isolated cuts to their important work.”

Prior to that hearing Council Vice President Nate Nehring asked Skiles if Mead’s amendment was consistent with the audit’s recommendations. Skiles said that it was but when asked by Councilwoman Dunn to clarify if he thought the amendment in its entirety was consistent, including the proposal to cut positions, Skiles clarified that the “movement” of positions was consistent with his recommendations, but he intentionally did not focus on cuts in his recommendations because his agency did not conduct a formal staffing study.

“Could they do more with more staff? Sure. Could they do less with less staff? Yes, but its derived internally and it’s an investment that the council decides based on what that the county wants to make,” said Skiles.

Executive Somers delivered his proposed 2025 biennial budget to the County Council on Wednesday, September 4. The proposed budget including all funds totals $3.07 billion over the next two years (an increase of 6.66% from the previous 2023-24 cycle) that includes a proposed General Fund budget of $699.8 million (an increase of 10.9%).

County Departments have been hit hard with staffing and resource shortages as of late—from the Prosecutor’s Office struggling to keep up with case backlogs, to the Health Department struggling to issue food permits resulting in hundreds of restaurants awaiting open confirmation —but Somers said the county simply does not have the money to do more.

Snohomish County, which remains one of the largest counties in Washington State, has one of the smallest General Fund budgets per capita. It’s about 73% that of Pierce County, which is of comparable size, and has the lowest tax rate out of King, Pierce, and Snohomish. The county has about a $10 million shortfall every year just to keep up with cost increases for salaries and benefits for county employees. One of the reasons the county moved to a biennial budget this year is to be smarter about its General Fund resources, alleviating the amount of work done every other year by a more efficient budget process.

On November 5, in the General Election, voters overwhelmingly voted down a proposition that would increase sales tax by 0.2% for additional funding for public safety.

On November 25 the County Council will consider raising its portion of property taxes for Snohomish County residents by 8% for additional funds.

Author: Kienan Briscoe