so usually after an office holder has been in office for thirty five years ago it's off to some pushy job well maybe that's why brian sontag is done and that's what we're going to find out today on public exposure brian welcome back to the show and just what cushy job do you have now well dan i know that was tongue in cheek i find myself as the currently is the executive director of the tacoma rescue mission yeah what do you do at the at the rescue mission well we've got six facilities we have transitional housing for people we have women and children in a family shelter we have an emergency shelter for men and women in different places of course we serve thousand meals a day you're around at our our main facility and one other we've got some rental low income apartments that with that we run you know we serve a lot of people run a lot of programs so we feed people and i was people so the taxpayer paid you for thirty five years to get training to run that to come rescue mission is that what if i'm very happy that the public was was employing me for the time they did now your history as an auditor you know both in the county as well as on the state level you look back on that and i got to ask you what do you what was the biggest plus and what was the biggest minus for you well the people parts are always the plus  the fact that i was hired by the people of the state and before that the people of pierce county to work on their behalf to you know to hold offices with that kind of a public trust and auditing especially in the the public arena is part accounting but it's also elites an equal part accountability and it was our job to hold governments at all levels in the state accountable to the people who they work for so in auditing those twenty seven hundred different units of government regularly it was our job to make sure they had good controls in place that they were acting as good stewards over their use of the public funds and hold them to the kind of standards that citizens expect and certainly deserve you know you it was interesting that you said that the people part of it is the plus but your job was to look over people's shoulders and to tell them what they were doing wrong i can't imagine that that was the most you know endearing thing in the world well it wasn't always in the twenty years i was in county government in pierce county keep in mind i was on the receiving end of audits from the state auditors office during that time and i think that perspective helped quite a bit it allowed us to focus on who really our customer is or or was in my case one of the one of the definitions of the word auditor has nothing to do with  charts of accounts or green eye shades it has to do it's defined as one who listens it has to do with the auditory part of the word and i thought that just made a great connection and a great fit for our approach to the auditor office and our need to go out and make sure we listen to citizens the folks who we work for our client was not the city the county or state agency who were auditing our direct client was the public the citizens  taxpayers of the state do you miss it i do i do it i did that for an awfully long time and i thought i do think we did it well and i and it was it was pretty special for me to be able to work for the public well you still are in with him from a rescue mission but you're also doing something else you're a senior fellow for government accountability at the freedom foundation which i think that most people would agree is a pretty conservative group sure what do you do there well you know you you said it in the title really has it i'm i'm helping them with accountability issues what i'm doing right now is communicating with citizens mostly at this point on how to be activists how to be involved in their government not just be a spectator and watch it go by but what role can they play and what difference can they make as individual or collective citizens also i'm going to be working with and talking to different groups of local elected officials around the state and helping them make sure that they know how to keep their doors and processes open so citizens can see what's going on and they can be involved it's about accountability still it's about open government as my entire career has been for people who have been here march and say for a long time they would know their freedom foundation as the evergreen freedom nation and well i'll just ask it this way do i pose the chair of the wash and say democratic party essentially kicked you out of their tent because a guest of this association you know a democrat he wore it well i guess not by his definition which seems to me to be pretty narrow that's a pretty narrow minded way to look at things i always thought parties any party would have a pretty big tent and allow people of diverse viewpoints and the interesting thing with the policy or the evergreen freedom foundation is is that it's not a policy area that i'm working on i'm involved in accountability open government transparency issues like i had been for all the years i was in office same things ok so if  wants to take a more personal or narrow view or be able to say that you know here's a here's another guy who was in office and now he's working for this right wing think tank group or  money i think that's mostly his effort you know all right let's let's go on to a more important church there if we could i want to take advantage of you and all of your experience in government and i want to actually go back to when you were considering running for governor last time where governor inslee got elected over rob mccallum right what was your platform going to be well it was going to be what my platform for public service has always been it was always going to be about listening to citizens it was always going to be about government being open and accessible government setting the priorities that people want set not that government decides in a dark room and behind closed doors and comes out and tells everybody what government's priorities are going to be but actually listens to people solicits their ideas and thoughts and acts that way does government really do that or do do people are there people who elected or not sit in in closed rooms and decide what the agenda is going to be sure they do i don't think government has ever done a very good job of listening to people in fact my definition of accountability that we used was pretty simple government being open and responsive accessible and government listening to people and when it talks to him tells them the truth and that was pretty simple prescription on my part but it's one that made sense and government needs to be about listening and then acting on what they hear from their employers if i were a cynical person which i have and i have a hard time trusting government yeah it would seem to me that that people in government they they go in with good intentions and then they get into a system and before you know it they seem to be working for themselves is that all right a lot of times you see a lot of good people with great intentions elected to public office and it doesn't take very long for them to be co opted by the bureaucracy you see it a lot of times especially we would see it in oh you till the board support commissions school boards where people are or look into essentially volunteer their time and the the executive director and that internal staff assures them that it will take care of things and will show you how it needs to go and then wind  up the board winds up following the director rather than the director following the board why does that happen is it did happen because it's easy if that's the default position it's easier to go along to follow a system that's been in place that they tell you has worked and will get everything you need just listen to us are people in washington state in the office or connected to people in office and they're making money directly off of the governmental decisions oh i think that's true i think it's always been true may always be sometimes that it is only about relationships and contacts sometimes under the guise of well i've got a guy who can do this and we know who to contract with again could be very well intentioned but it isn't necessarily the right way to do it let's talk let's talk about washington state issues and what's number one what's the number one issue do you think from the public standpoint well i think the public wants and expects and certainly deserves their government to be fiscally accountable and manage the money that they get from the taxpayers very well you're always going to to know that the number one priorities of any government are going to be in the areas of public safety and education and i that's not going to be different whether it's the state of washington or king or pierce county whoever it is but to affect all those things people want to make sure that you are being good stewards of their public money that you set the priorities right that you don't overspend and when you come back and ask your employers for more money through the way of a bond a levy or a tax increase that it be for something legitimate and it is and it's well understood so the public says fiscal accountability fiscal responsibility that's that's number one issue i think so what  government say washington state government a lot of times says we've got we've got bureaucracies that are in place we know best and we'll get it done i think again it sounds simple but the most important  and the biggest piece that's missing is the listening to people part you know setting up commissions or or groups or foundations around the state that actually could facilitate hearing from citizens on a regular basis not just the ones you know the the one percent who want to go attend a legislative hearing or a city council meeting but go where people are and actually elicit their their thoughts and ideas so why should i just get depressed to  go get myself a great internet connection and go live in a cabin somewhere because that's no fun you know government was was set up to be to be a participatory sport not not just something for spectators to take a look at and watch the parade going by but to get involved find a way president kennedy in all called on on people to be involved to be participants to find a way to help make that difference aside your advisory opinions that to issuing an advice that you issued through the freedom foundation are you involved i am involved yeah how it how it has that it's my roots my upbringing my dad was in elected office for twenty two years my brother dick served on the tacoma city council and then later the tacoma school board being involved participating in government and making sure that we can involve citizens it's kind of been a big deal with me forever the political environment washington state is it too one sided it's very divisive you know each each party would like to paint the other in a particularly tight corner and i'm not sure that those parties aren't comfortable being in those tight corners you've got the extremes on the left and the right where almost all the rest of us are out here in this vast middle you know from the public standpoint though if i wanted to see that i go to a football game and i want to see at a government cooperation where people are working together on solutions you bet instead of carving out turf absolutely and i almost think th parties and party labels are a big piece of that blame or that problem you look at a lot of local governments that either either cities or counties or school boards a lot of times who will look nonpartisan  board members or elected officials and they have to find ways to come and work together on policy issues on philosophy not not just because well if you're a republican and i'm a democrat and you came up with the idea even though i might have liked it i can't like it because you came up with it and vice versa if i have an idea you can't like it whether it's good or not is local government just a stepping stone to higher office i don't believe it is and i don't believe it should be i think i think public office at any level is the same high calling not just because of what level of government i think a city council member in a middle or small city is just as important a job as being a state legislator in fact i argue more so because the decisions they make have a more immediate direct effect on their friends and neighbors every day it's also probably an incredibly hard job just for that for that reason you bet it is they go to the grocery store or the the cleaners or any place else and the people who they encounter no one and they want to ask tough questions all the time and so much of it at a local level is completely out of control it's either a state or a federal mandate and oftentimes you know you've got your mandated to do something but you don't have the funding to support it absolutely true so why would anybody run for local office because they want to be involved they want to serve that's that's where you see the biggest heart i think of people who get into public service they really do look at it as a service so i'm going to ask something that's not on the sheet ok and there i ask you about this are there some some rock stars in public office that you see out there that are up and coming here in washington state oh yeah i really do think there are going to ask you to name names well name a couple and of course they're they're both on the republican side but in the state senate and i see bruce stem from the area and i see joe faine from south king county couple really bright guys who work hard and i think you would you would identify them as pretty moderate an issue based and they're not ideologues what is it about them that has you say to me that these guys are up and coming because they'll listen to listen that that happens to be if you probably found out that's an important word to me getting back to the political environment washington state though it is being you know too one sided can republicans be saved you know i don't i don't know that it's so much about republicans being saved or democrats so much in power  think it has to do with a lot of how each of them is marketed right now and clearly the democrats do a much better job of getting their thoughts and opinions and and also labeling and narrowing people's view of of the opposition and that's part of what the game is i mean certainly you know you don't get to govern unless you win you know and so that part has to happen but i think right now one team's better than the other taxes issues are huge here in washington state as they are everywhere because the public is strapped the governments are strapped because of what happened in the economy and perhaps out for other reasons too it's very difficult to  to propose a new tax are what tax changes getting back to your race for governor that didn't happen what tax changes would you like to have seen here in washington state what we proposed this letter to the governor and legislative leaders at that time really calling for what we we describe as a an accountability forum  a kind of agenda that would bring people together not just a blue ribbon commission but something that would really bring people in from different areas some smart people good thinkers community leaders joe average citizens and start to assemble a process that took a look at how the state goes about its financial operation and put everything on the table put sources of revenue on the table how they spend money what pots they're divided in what are some of those mandates and requirements that the federal government and the state government put on lower levels of government and really examine the whole thing how money is comes in and how money is spent and goes out and how you can do that more responsibly i really again is going to i'm going to think it comes from listening to people first get them involved but if i'm protecting a bureaucracy i'm not going to want anybody doing that that sounds very much like zero base budgeting wow what a concept yeah i came from an environment in pierce county where we really did start each budget with a blank sheet of paper and we did start was the row and i want to state government where people would would look at gas to you if you even mentioned that term that they always started with what their budget was previously and then figured out how to how to grow it how to make it bigger what to add to it never to look the other way and to really identify are we meeting the needs of the public are we meeting their priorities what do they want us to do and you missed the whole thing something that i've always wondered about  is when government gets involved and property development it always seems it's always bothered me is there is there a reason for the government to be involved in property development  i guess a simple answer i could say no there's probably legitimate reasons to get involved in most anything if you take it that far but government exists to do a few things specifically and you know a lot of people have talked about the priorities of government and coming up with that list of priorities will you could you could pick up and hold the state constitution and identified that as the first set of priorities that everything that's been created after that in the many volumes of state laws and thing else is an add on and some of those might be great programs important programs needed  and maybe you'd prioritize some of those up pretty high but no matter what everything we've added cost money you know some of the biggest property developers around the united states are also very politically involved as the koch brothers out of  things supposedly they've been involved here in washington state have you seen them in washington state or somehow involved through the american legislative exchange council well perhaps through that council they have i don't think they've been involved in you know specific groups within the state or candidates i think they have through that council but again that council is like the freedom foundation or the washroom policy center there are groups that are you know they may advocate certain positions certainly everybody who  does that does have a philosophy or a certain bent but i haven't seen them specifically or directly or personally involved i grew up in a state in the east and was politically involved and when i came out here  i'd love every minute that i've been out here except i don't understand initiatives we didn't have that back east is that a good way to run government through initiatives i don't think you want government run by initiative but i think it's the inherent right of people to directly petition their government through initiative or referendum is very healthy and up until recent years those were used sparingly it was a citizen hundred seventy two that brought us our open government the public records act that set the stage for how governments at all levels will hold their public hearings what records are available to the public that was done by citizen initiative and there wasn't even an opposition on the ballot which shows the kind of public support that had oftentimes you'll see initiatives that fill gaps you  know if the legislature doesn't do something that enough people think ought to have been done and an initiative goes out and they get signatures and it makes it to the ballot and if the people vote for it then that is the public speaking effect our state constitution very different from the state you came from but our state constitution actually identifies that as the the highest legislative authority in this state and what we've seen though not just here in this state but around the country is initiatives and ballot measures are used as political tools now by political pros who are making money off of the campaigns and then at the same time they are also trying to affect some other kind of policy that may not have anything to do with the initiative how can we stop that oh i heard you we care i think we care but i think the public has a pretty good sense of of what to vote yes on and what to vote no on and i think they've done a pretty responsible job with that all along  i think anything can be tweaked adjusted amended as you go along and certainly even the laws pertaining to initiative or referendum could be that it's all it's always got to be done to stand with the public's interest first speaking of the public's interest and speaking of responsibility i have always wondered what is the financial and performance responsibility of sound transit because i see trains that i empty and i see a lot of money going into that well those are are things that i started hearing in olympia soon as i got there and we had some