In the new system, if you live in district 2, you only vote for the candidates who will directly represent you.
Despite how progressive Spokane City has become, the county commission has been entirely Republican since 2010. In a Republican-leaning county, this left a tough hill to climb for Democrats. That means that, if you currently live in the old district 2, where Al French is the incumbent, you didn’t just vote on French’s race, you also voted for the leaders of district 1 and 3. Historically, each individual district voted on its representative in the primary, but in the general election, everyone in the county voted on all the districts. Currently, conversations between two commissioners are subject to open meetings laws because two commissioners constitute a voting majority.Īnother big change is in the general election. It also means commissioners can talk to each other without having to hold a public meeting. The additional slots mean Spokane County joins every other large Washington county in electing a board of at least five members. Pierce County, home to Tacoma, has seven county councilors. Until now the number had been three, and for a county our size, that’s a little absurd. In mid-July, ballots will drop for Spokane County’s first ever five-seat county commission race. What is changing and what will it mean? Check out an interactive map here. The long answer follows, but before that, we need to talk about changes not just to the size of the commission, but the structure by which we elect our commissioners. Another big reason is that the county commission conducts most of its public meetings during regular business hours when it’s hard to rally working people to speak out on decisions that impact their communities. Part of that is because media coverage of issues like housing and homelessness often focuses on city responses.
Commissioners wield far greater power than you’d guess by the amount of news coverage or political activism focused on their activities.
You may have heard the Spokane County Board of Commissioners is changing, but we’ve had a lot of readers and listeners ask a more fundamental question: “what does the commission even do in the first place?” Spokane’s county commission is getting bigger and more representative.
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