For about five minutes, King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay didn’t have a job. He officially became the King County Executive when the election results were certified Tuesday. But, before he was sworn in, he had to resign his role as councilmember.
After US District Court Judge Richard Jones swore him in, the now-gainfully employed Zahilay exclaimed, “We did it!” with much, much more power over the 12th largest county in America than he had before.
Zahilay’s ascension is historic. He’s the youngest ever King County Executive and the first immigrant to lead the county. Plus, like Seattle Mayor-elect Katie Wilson, he’s the first heckin’ millennial to hold this seat.
“It is the honor of my lifetime to stand before you today as the King County Executive,” Zahilay said. “This is one of the greatest responsibilities that a person can be entrusted with, and I’m going to work every day to earn the trust of 2.3 million people across 39 cities and unincorporated areas that I now represent.”
Normally, we’d expect the political pomp and circumstance in January. But Zahilay won a special election, triggered when Dow Constantie left the job to run Sound Transit this March.
Since his election win over King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci, Zahilay has been preparing for this day with his 100 member transition committee.
So far, two of the transition team’s senior members have full time gigs in his administration. Karan Gill will be deputy executive, a job he did for interim King County Executive Shannon Braddock. Before that, he was Constantine’s chief of staff. Jasmin Weaver, the Executive Vice President of the income-inequality focused organization Civic Ventures, is Zahilay’s chief of staff.
But with big change comes big turnover. During his speech, Zahilay said that he’ll “transmit proposals to restructure the executive office … so that our government can better reflect the priorities that I ran on.”
Those priorities include “addressing homelessness, addiction, and incarceration; expanding housing, child care, transit, and infrastructure; making King County government more visible, connected, and community-driven; delivering a government that is more transparent, efficient, and accountable.”
“We have an extraordinary opportunity in front of us, an opportunity to reset the region, rebuild trust, and deliver a government that is closer to the people that we serve,” Zahilay said.
According to a report by Publicola, Zahilay plans to restructure the entire executive office and chop off at least some department heads.
The Seattle Times reports 133 of the 182 jobs in the department are appointed by the executive. Zahilay can do what he wants with them. This isn’t unusual when a new executive comes to town. We may have forgotten this during Constantine’s 16-year Dow-nasty.
But Zahilay spokesperson Erik Houser writes in an email to the Stranger: “There has been no notice to appointees that they are being laid off.”
The Zahilay administration plans to connect the heads that do roll with “departmental jobs” if they don’t receive another offer letter from the man himself.
As one of his first acts of executive, Zahilay will submit three names to fill his vacant King County Council seat. Whoever the Council chooses will reign over District 2 until a special election next fall. Zahilay said he will only consider appointing someone who won’t run in that race.
Before all that though—some goodbyes. The Council bid adieu to District 5 County Councilmember De’Sean Quinn—who was appointed to Dave Upthegrove’s seat after he moved to the greener pastures of state lands commissioner—and swore in Quinn’s replacement, Steffanie Fain.
The County Council also honored outgoing interim King County Executive Shannon Braddock, the first woman to lord over the county, and declared today “Executive Shannon Braddock Day.” At the end of her address to the room, Braddock said, “King County rules, as does public service. Karaoke later.” Hell yeah.
