Harger: King County kept paying contractors despite warnings of fraud. A whistleblower got fired for asking questions

When one party runs everything, accountability tends to get soft.

I get a lot of guff from my Democratic friends who assume I must be some kind of Republican, because I do a lot of commentaries that are critical of the party in charge around here. I’m a bit old-school, with the rapidly disappearing belief that the media’s job is to hold those in power accountable. And around here, the Democrats are the ones in power. In a state where power was more evenly divided, the two parties would keep each other honest. That friction is the system working. Around here, that friction is largely gone. Republicans, meanwhile, can’t seem to find a message or the right candidates to offer any meaningful balance.

So the watchdog job falls to whoever’s willing to do it. I’d be doing the same thing broadcasting out of rural Mississippi. The party in power is the party worth scrutinizing.

Which brings me to what The Seattle Times is reporting this week. Billions of your dollars, distributed by King County with little oversight and even less accountability. And when someone inside the system tried to raise the alarm, he got fired.

King County DCHS paid contractors with little evidence of work

According to The Seattle Times, King County’s Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS) is the county’s largest department, responsible for distributing billions of dollars in social services grants. For years, The Seattle Times found that the department dismissed warnings and overlooked red flags suggesting contractors were misusing your tax dollars.

Organizations accused of diverting funds intended to help disadvantaged communities kept getting paid. Even when contractors provided little to no evidence of their work or spending, The Seattle Times reported, DCHS paid them anyway.

The department’s contractor list grew 41% during the pandemic, The Seattle Times found, from around 420 to 591 organizations. Staffing didn’t keep up. The oversight that was supposed to be happening largely wasn’t. The Seattle Times reported that the department was visiting only 22% of contractors, when its own standard called for 33%. It had no department-wide anti-fraud training. No rigorous invoice verification.

In late 2024, one county employee told auditors, “There are blatant misuses of funds happening, but we can’t get anyone on that team to help.”

A cosmetologist, a King County contractor apparently living in Cambodia, and a whistleblower fired for asking questions

The Seattle Times dug up some specifics.

A woman registered a business called Your Pretty Perfect. She was a licensed cosmetologist, and two weeks after the county posted a grant opportunity, she signed a three-year, $470,000 contract to provide job training for young adults of color. Forklift certification. Trucking. Real estate.

The Seattle Times contacted the organizations she listed as partners. Several told the paper they had never heard of her. Her performance reports to the county had fields left blank or filled in with words like “done” or “not yet.” She collected $314,000 before the county quietly cut her contract. No fraud finding. No clawback. The county told The Seattle Times it is “looking into” whether any money needs to be recovered.

Then there’s a contractor who submitted invoices that included charges from Amazon, Prime Video, and Safeway. When the county asked for backup documents after his contract ended, he told them he had no obligation to provide them. He appeared to have been living in Cambodia. When a reporter with The Seattle Times reached him on WhatsApp and mentioned the county contracts, he hung up.

King County whistleblower fired after reporting suspected fraud

Then there’s Tom Fullum, a county grants administrator who flagged what he believed was potential fraud. He emailed his manager that he was “aware of potential or suspected fraud” that should be investigated. The county fired him four days later. The county said it was for performance reasons. He’s suing for wrongful termination. The state auditor later found that DCHS didn’t investigate his fraud allegation quickly enough.

Five separate external investigations have been opened into this King County department or its grants by local, state, and federal agencies over the past two years. The Seattle Times reported that the FBI, the DOJ, and the IRS have all made inquiries.

Nobody is pounding the table in King County government

This is where the lack of meaningful opposition really shows up. When one party runs everything, the incentive to sweep uncomfortable stories under the rug is high, and the cost of doing so is low. Councilmember Reagan Dunn, a Republican and a former federal prosecutor, has been raising concerns about this department for years. The Seattle Times reported he hadn’t even heard about some of the specific allegations until the newspaper told him. That’s what happens when there’s no real friction in the system. The people who should be demanding answers get shut out, and the people running the department answer mostly to colleagues who share their politics and their priorities.

Nobody in power in King County government is getting righteously angry about this. Nobody is treating it like what it is: your money, handed to contractors with almost no strings attached, and in some cases, apparently gone for good. And it’s worth noting that at those press conferences where the county announces new policies and additional training, there seem to be fewer and fewer reporters willing to push back, too. But that’s a story for another day.

The frog in the pot

Every levy, every tenth of a cent on the sales tax, every property tax increase. They all sound reasonable in isolation. This seems like an important cause. Of course, we want to help disadvantaged communities. Of course, we want job training for young people of color. These are genuinely good goals.

But when you add it all up: the property taxes, the sales taxes, the B&O taxes, the car tabs, the levies, you are handing an enormous amount of money to a government that, in this case, couldn’t tell you where it went. A cosmetologist who registered her business two weeks before applying for the grant collected $314,000. A man apparently living overseas hung up on a reporter. The employee who raised the alarm got fired.

We are the frogs. The pot is starting to boil. And when there’s no meaningful opposition to ask hard questions, it falls to watchdogs to call it out. The Seattle Times did its job this week. The question is whether anyone in King County government will do theirs.

The Republicans could help by fielding candidates who can actually win. Instead, Joe Kent lost the 3rd Congressional District to Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Twice. Loren Culp. Ellen Craswell. Extreme candidates don’t peel off Puget Sound moderates. They just don’t. And so we end up in the situation we’re in, where Democrats have total control and the opportunity to be a meaningful check on their power keeps getting frittered away by candidates whose main campaign theme is owning the libs rather than anything with actual substance. That’s not a winning message in the suburbs of Seattle. It’s not even close.

We pay an enormous amount in taxes around here. Nobody running this county is asking where it went. Somebody has to. Consider me the pebble in the shoe.

Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here. 

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