Powers that be
Board of County Commissioners

by Bruce Bartlett

With campaigns underway for two Washington County Commissioner district seats (our District 2 and District 4 to the west) and the County Chair, it’s a good time to examine the areas of responsibility of this important body. In our unincorporated urban area (UUA), our County Commissioner is our main elected representative. In District 2 this amounts to over 130,000 people in about 51,000 households with only a single elected representative to listen to our needs and make decisions on our behalf.

The Board of Commissioners (BCC) is responsible for carrying out all functions and duties required of the County or its officials by the Oregon Constitution and federal, state and county laws. The Washington County Charter provides for a Council-Manager form of government, giving legislative responsibility to the five-member Board and designating administrative authority to a Board-appointed professional County Administrator.

The Chairman of the BCC is elected by a county-wide vote; each of the other four Commissioners is elected by voters in their district. All have four-year terms and must be residents of the county. The salary of the chair is $91,574 and the salary for Commissioners is $36,630 (defined as 40% of the salary of the chair), plus a few stipends for travel and technology. While the Commissioners have access to county staff to research and discuss issues, they have no specialized staff to support them for individually-initiated projects. Only official motions by the Board can direct staff to perform specific tasks.

Non-Operating expenditures provide an internal service for the entire County organization and are divided into four areas; Debt and Other Financing, Risk Management and Insurance, Replacement/Reserves, and Miscellaneous. The Capital portion of the budget includes two main areas, Transportation (95% of the total), and Facilities and Technology. The rest of the budget items shown are operating expenditures—the recurring costs associated with providing public services to County residents, including staffing.

The Washington County Strategic Plan organizes the government into five functional areas: general government; public safety; land use, housing and transportation; health and human services; and culture, education and recreation. The total Washington County budget for 2009-2010 is $652.1 million ($16.4 million (2% less than last year) and employs about 1700 people. The Board is responsible for creating a proposed annual operating budget and capital program that complies with State law, and specifies procedures to be used for its financial management. The Board also creates a five-year projection of the operating budget and capital program which compares the proposed budget to such projections made in the previous five years. The projections are informational and not binding upon the future actions of the Board.

By law, the County Commissioners are the Board of Directors for both Clean Water Services and the Washington County Housing Authority. Although Clean Water Services maintains a close working relationship with Washington County government, it is a special service district that serves as a separately-managed and -financed public utility. The Housing Authority remains a separate legal entity and contracts with the County to implement and administer Housing Authority programs and all support services through the county’s Department of Housing Services.

All Commissioners serve on committees for the Washington County Budget, Enhanced Sheriff Patrol District (ESPD), and Urban Roads Maintenance District (URMD) Budget. The Commissioners enter into Intergovernmental Agreements (IGAs) with cities and agencies for purposes of cooperation and coordination. The URMD was formed through an IGA in 1999 and provides funds for maintaining the local neighborhood streets in the county’s UUA that lie within the URMD boundaries.

Individual Commissioners serve as county representatives on a total of 30 different boards, commissions, committees and councils, such as the Public Safety Coordinating Council, Tualatin Basin Water Supply Project Steering Committee, Urban and Rural Reserves Committee, Urbanization Forum Steering Committee, several Metro Policy Advisory Committees, Rural Roads Operations and Maintenance Advisory Committee, Hillsboro Airport Issues Roundtable, Regional Investment Board, the Commission on Children and Families, and the Vision Action Network.

It is an incredible amount of work requiring interactions with virtually every municipality and jurisdiction in the county, region and state, to say nothing of the efforts to respond to the needs and concerns of their constituents.

In the last two elections in 2006 and 2008, the undervote (those who voted but who didn’t vote for their district’s commissioner) was nearly 50%. Those elections were uncontested—only one announced candidate—so hopefully with a vigorously contested election on May 18, you will turn in your ballot and vote for this extremely important position!

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