Mielke touts county’s proactive approach in address

Spokane County government is reinventing itself in the same way the county’s signature courthouse has modernized, Commissioner Todd Mielke said in his State of the County address Friday morning.

“We’ve not always been at the forefront,” Mielke said. “I think that, if you look at our history, there are times when we have been very satisfied with just having a seat at the table.”

Mielke told a crowd of about 120 business leaders, elected officials and community organizers gathered for breakfast at the Spokane Valley Event Center that the role of county government has changed over the past 10 years – his time in office – and especially in the past two years, following the hiring of county Chief Operations Officer John Dickson and the focus on lean management.

“We are the king of knee-jerk reactions,” Mielke said. The county tends to put “bad processes in place by managing to the exception,” Mielke said, and the emphasis in the past few years has been on making more efficient reforms that address institutional issues.

Mielke pointed to a worker’s compensation change allowing county workers to return to work faster as well as sped-up event permits from the Parks Department as evidence that changes are working and saving taxpayers money. Changes enacted in the first two years of the push for lean government are expected to save $2 million, he said.

Mielke, who has announced he’s seeking the county’s chief executive officer position following the retirement of longtime chief Marshall Farnell later this year, touted the county’s most visible recent improvements while acknowledging a source of criticism from opponents of the all-Republican county commission.

“Yes, we have racetracks,” Mielke said, referring to the Spokane County Raceway bought by the county in 2008 for $4.4 million, a purchase many have called a boondoggle. “It keeps coming up, and no, we are not spending a dime out of our annual budget to operate that facility.”

Mielke pointed to the new Spokane County Regional Animal Protection Services facility on Trent Avenue, the county’s ownership of the region’s solid waste transfer stations and the new $173 million water reclamation facility at 1004 N. Freya St. opened in 2011 as recent examples of Spokane County government presenting what he called “flagship” projects. He also spoke about the environmental controversy surrounding that facility, after a state panel ruled the wastewater treated there and reintroduced to the Spokane River contained more phosphorus than federal standards allow.

“We are struggling to make sure that regulations are achievable,” he said. Federal standards are too stringent to even be measured accurately by existing technology, putting local governments like Spokane County in a bind when they have to comply, Mielke said.

Other challenges moving forward will be criminal justice reform, implementing the federal health care law at the county level and ongoing talks about future development under the state’s Growth Management Act, Mielke said. Several neighborhood groups challenged the county’s decisions on what parcels should be designated for future urban development under a law that Mielke said has several flaws. He called land use his least favorite topic, though he touted the county’s legal record on appeals of growth management decisions as close to 80 percent. Some opponents dispute that figure.

“Most other issues, we can get to a point where people go, ‘I didn’t get everything, but you know, I’m feeling OK,’ ” Mielke said. “Land use, I always have at least one party madder when they walk out than when they walked in.”

The county is scheduled to hold negotiations with several neighborhood groups later this year about its most recent decisions to expand the urban growth boundary.