Spokane Gets Law And New Order Prosecutor Has Implemented Modern Managerial Concepts

The young administrator leaps to his feet. He flings open a pair of upholstered doors, exposing a mass of scribbled words, lines and arrows.

He stabs a finger at the green ink on the gleaming white board. He talks excitedly, and these words tumble out: “total quality management” … “vision” … “customer service” … “team building” …

No, this isn’t a Fortune 500 boardroom. This isn’t even the private sector.

This is the office of Jim Sweetser, Spokane County’s new prosecuting attorney.

Since voters put him in office last fall, the 37-year-old Sweetser has been shaking up tradition.

It began with a symbolic gesture. He walked into his new quarters and yanked open the curtains that had always been shut. Sunlight streamed in.

Since then, many other windows shut by his predecessor, Don Brockett, have been pried open.

Consensus building is the rule. Innovation is encouraged. Employees no longer are in the dark: They get detailed, weekly reports on office goings-on. Middlemanagement has been greatly reduced, flattening the organizational chart. Deputy prosecutors are sent to training seminars that would have been scoffed at in the recent past.

Sweetser stabs a finger at the white board, hitting the word “RESULTS.”

“That’s what I’m after,” he says. “I’m not doing this just as an exercise.”

Give him time, the prosecutor says, and more cases will go to trial, more criminals will be sent to prison for long stretches, the office will be more efficient and professional, and the public will be better protected.

Just three months on the job heading the biggest law firm between Seattle and Minneapolis (53 prosecutors, a $4.9 million budget), and Sweetser has been heard promising to “save Spokane” from gangs, drugs and repeat, violent offenders. Give him time, he says.

While he has his share of critics, inside and outside of the office, there is no doubting his missionary zeal - and his 70-hour work weeks. Like the title of the well-thumbed book on his shelf, Sweetser wants to be known as the county’s “Visionary Leader.”

Little known by the public before the election, he is a lanky, former Ivy Leaguer who played college basketball. After law school, he became a career prosecutor, working up the ranks from misdemeanors to major crimes.

He worked 10 years in the Spokane County office, with little management experience when he ran to replace the retiring Brockett. In the general election, Sweetser defeated Brockett’s hand-picked successor, Steve Matthews, then chief criminal deputy prosecutor.

Sweetser vowed to boost morale by treating employees with respect and ending a 2-year-old union dispute. Shortly after taking office, however, he surprised deputy prosecutors by refusing their top contract demand - a provision protecting them against on-the-spot firings. More eyebrows arched when Sweetser fired a half-dozen employees, including three veteran supervisors.

They lacked his “vision” or weren’t “team players,” he says. But the unprecedented bloodletting sent a chill through the office.

Some of the fired employees countered with a lawsuit. A trial was hastily ordered based on claims of irreparable harm, and the new prosecutor was hauled into court. After days of ugly testimony, with each side accusing the other of unprofessional conduct, a judge ruled in Sweetser’s favor.

“Nobody wins in that sort of situation,” he says now. “But I wouldn’t change a thing that I did. My heart’s in the right place. I didn’t feel I had a choice but to move the organization forward.”

Sweetser predicts the union stalemate will end soon. “I’m about as pro-employee as you can get. My idea is that everybody in this organization is a manager. We have to all think like a manager. It’s not us and them, it’s we.”

His first bold stroke was to eliminate the chief criminal and civil deputy positions, spreading the cost savings around. Then he reinvented the office’s longstanding unit system. They are now called “teams,” as in the Major Crimes Team.

The 10 teams are headed by “leaders,” who huddle with Sweetser once a week in a small conference room. Minutes are taken, and passed on later to employees.

Complaining is not allowed. The new boss has banned “negativism.” Constructive criticism is tolerated, but only after pats on the back are exchanged. “We start our meetings with what’s going well,” Sweetser says.

Many employees applaud the new approach.

Deputy Prosecutor Dave Hearrean was so frustrated by the old top-down style he quit after six years in the office. He returned after Sweetser was elected.

“He’s done five years’ worth of stuff in three months,” Hearrean says. “We finally have a voice in what goes on here. Nothing is being done behind people’s backs. Our doors can stay open, and there are a lot more smiling faces.”

Other deputies say the changes are mostly window dressing. Their mailboxes get stuffed with “Jim literature” on corporate efficiency while caseloads mount.

“He’s going around doing PR stuff and we’re drowning in work,” complains a deputy, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals.

“The issues that are most important to people in that office haven’t changed - and that’s the workload and the hours they’re putting in,” says Bill Keenan, a union official who represents government workers in Spokane. “The real problem is they’re overworked and understaffed.”

Some employees say their time is wasted on squishy things like developing mission statements, guiding principles, “team culture,” and “customer-service” survey forms.

To all that, Sweetser says give him time, he’s laying a foundation. “We have to put our house in order, first. We have to be accountable before we go out screaming for more deputies,” he says.

Expect the screaming to start early if Sweetser’s request for a $120,000-a-year gang-prosecution team is nixed by tight-fisted county commissioners.

On other fronts, he is pledging support for a drug diversion court and specialized prosecution of domestic violence cases. In all, the prosecutor says, he needs 10 more deputies to keep pace with increasing criminal caseloads.

But even if the cavalry doesn’t arrive, Sweetser says his office will improve. Written charging standards, guiding how each criminal case should be handled, will be adopted this year. A community outreach program, which he calls Neighborhood Oriented Prosecuting Attorneys, is being tested at the West Central Community Center.

“I know I’m on the right track,” he says, “because every single day, employees are exceeding my expectations.”