Claudia Balducci discusses King County executive candidacy, eyes regional solutions

KING COUNTY, Wash. — Claudia Balducci objectively has a lengthy and impressive resume that is now seeking another title as King County executive.

She’s the former Bellevue Mayor, director of the King County Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention department, and transportation choices advocate who has been a King County Council member since 2015.

With the departure of Dow Constantine, she’s now seeking to fill the role of Executive.

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“The challenges that I hear about most from constituents that we see have to do with public safety, housing, people being able to afford to live here, and transportation. These are exactly the areas where I have been working as a regional leader for years, and I, I would put my track record of accomplishment up against anyone,” said Balducci in an interview on Monday.

She entered the race nine months before the primary, although political insiders have long suggested she was eyeing it well before that.

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Balducci maintains that the King County Regional Homelessness Authority should remain in place, despite metrics that would indicate it is underperforming, and the rate continues to rise. There has been a state of emergency in King County for now close to a decade.

“There's a fundamental truism here, and that is that homelessness is a regional problem that requires regional solutions we need to deliver, and we need to make sure that we are showing results,” she says, continuing, “There's a revolving door problem, and that is if people come into homelessness and then go into shelter and come back into homelessness.”

She also said she has a plan to immediately address the fentanyl crisis, not waiting on the county to set up multiple crisis care centers as part of a voter-approved levy.

“I proposed in our county budget a concept that we called the side door program. It's literally the side door of the county jail, the West Wing is actually its formal name. That is an underutilized piece of infrastructure that we could move people into. Don't have to be booked into jail. Could be a place where a police officer or somebody who's disrupting street activity needs to bring someone so they can sober up, stabilize, and get connected to services. We should be scrappy. We should use the tools we have at hand,” said Balducci.

As far as the youth jail, Balducci noticeably walked a fine line during the closure talk earlier this year, citing her experience working in the system. Constantine had pledged to close the facility by 2025, but moved the goalposts to 2028 before the Council stepped in and took closure off the table for now.

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“If anybody is aware of what the conditions were like in the old juvenile detention facility, they were inadequate. They were not acceptable. We needed to replace that facility with a new facility, and it is a good thing that we did. We also need a place to bring young people who are a danger to themselves and others who have been found to be committing serious crimes and so that building serves a purpose.”

But when asked how she would govern differently than Constantine, who has held the role since 2008, she said, “I am a big believer that we need to work together with our partner, jurisdictions and public and private nonprofit and for-profit partners and community members to make. I'm a big believer that government is a huge part of the solution to many of our problems. We have a very important role, but we can't do it alone.”