Jim McIntire, former WA treasurer during financial crisis, dies at 71

Jim McIntire, who served as Washington’s state treasurer in the midst of the global financial crisis, died Aug. 16 at his home in Seattle. He was 71.

“Jim’s brave fight against a rare and aggressive prostate cancer over the last 28 months set yet another example of his fortitude and determination,” said his wife, Christina Koons, in a message to family and friends.

McIntire served in Washington’s Legislature from 1998 to 2009 and chaired the House Finance Committee while it focused on tax reform. He left the Legislature at the height of the Great Recession to run for state treasurer and spent the next eight years steering the state away from a major banking crisis and fixing cash flow problems around large-scale transportation projects.

Born in Bluffton, Ohio, McIntire landed in Washington, D.C., in 1977 to work for former Democratic Sen. Hubert Humphrey as an economist after receiving a master’s degree from the University of Michigan. He came to Seattle in 1981 to pursue a doctorate in economics at the University of Washington.

Once in Seattle, he became a senior lecturer at what is now the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance. He soon turned his attention back to politics. In 1984, he joined former Washington Gov. Booth Gardner’s campaign by helping shape his policy agenda.

He joined Gardner’s staff as a fiscal policy adviser and in 1987 returned to the UW to finish his doctorate and teach economics.

McIntire entered the political arena as a candidate in 1998 and was elected as a representative for the 46th Legislative District, representing Northeast Seattle. He served five terms and chaired the finance committee.

While in the Legislature, McIntire helped pass bills that focused on fiscal reform, including a tax exemption for nonprofits providing low-income housing, restoration of the estate tax and increased tobacco and alcohol taxes to help fund schools.

He also sponsored the renewal of technology industry tax incentives in 2005, which the Seattle area’s two largest tech employers, Amazon and Microsoft, have used to build office campuses and data centers in the state.

In 2008, he was elected as Washington’s state treasurer. McIntire’s time in the role was tested immediately as a few hours after he was sworn in on Jan. 14, 2009, his staff was told the Bank of Clark County would be closing two days later.

“I was sworn in on Wednesday at noon and the bank failed and closed that Friday at 6:30 p.m.,” McIntire said in an interview with the Seattle Times three days before he died last week. “Come Monday morning, we had everything we could lined up for a meeting with the major banks and major banking associations in the state, in my office.”

The bank’s closing triggered the then 41-year-old Public Deposit Protection Act that required all other banks with public deposits to cover the uninsured public deposits of a failed bank. It was the first time the statute had been invoked.

More than $15 million in public money had to be covered at a time when banks were teetering on the edge, all of it prorated by the amount of money they had in the state’s banking pool. McIntire said that banking representatives looked around at each other in his office realizing that about a dozen banks could fail during the financial crisis, causing other strained banks to cover public funds.

McIntire went to work with the Legislature to fix the statute. His assistant state treasurer at the time, Wolfgang Opitz, said the statute was supposed to be an assessment mechanism. In 41 years, there had never been a fund created in case it was needed to cover public deposits at risk when a bank failed.

“I was told before Jim, by the director of banking for the state’s department of financial institutions, that a bank was closing and invoking this statute,” Opitz said. “I knew what it could cause, but I knew this was the chance to get this exactly right, we were going to up to Legislature and get this fixed.

“When I told Jim, he said, ‘Great, that means we can do things the right way.’ ”

McIntire and his team were able to rewrite the state’s public banking statutes, giving his office greater flexibility to manage the impending crisis. He said within the following six months, all public deposits were fully protected or insured and even though more than two dozen banks with public deposits failed over the course of 18 months, no further public funds were lost.

“I knew Jim for 35 years and this was the kind of thing he was built for,” Opitz said. “We had to keep things quiet so there was never a scramble, never a run on the banks and it was exhausting to keep up with all of it, but it was rewarding for him to figure out what needs to be done to make things better and to accomplish things for the public benefit.”

Over the course of his time in the treasurer’s office, McIntire dealt with falling revenues and state spending cuts as Washington replaced the Highway 520 bridge and the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

He served two terms and did not run for reelection in 2016.

“Jim McIntire was emphatically a force for stability, progress, and good governance during one of the most economically turbulent times in our state and country’s history,” Washington State Treasurer Mike Pellicciotti said in a statement. “ (He) was a public servant in every measure of the word and an example for all those aspiring to lead when the times we live in demand integrity, determination, and humility. He will be sorely missed.”