The Peoples House is the Legislative Branch or County Council. These five councilors are supposed to represent the peoples interests and provide balance to the views of the 2000 government employees in the administrative branch.
We currently have the distinction of being the only county legislative branch in Washington that has zero employees. That means the County Council has no independent support staff or legal help of any kind to represent the Councilor’s interests. They have no means to do their own research. They can’t even run their own meetings without assistance from the administrative staff.
This isn’t how any other county in Washington is run and it is hard to believe there is any kind of balance when the only information that is provided to councilors is what the administrative branch wants them to know.
This is because the county charter spells out that there should be a legislative branch, but it was silent on the issue of legislative staffing.
We have an opportunity to make that clear and restore some balance between the legislative branch and the administrative branch. We simply need to make it clear that they should have their own staff and run their own meetings.
This really has no cost to the county but shifting the assignment of a few staff members. At the time of the Charters adoption, there were four office staff, and three Policy Analysts in the council office. Add an independent legal advisor and we actually have the independent legislative branch the charter calls for.