KING COUNTY, Wash. — King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci is publicly accusing the council of wasting more than $300,000 on election flyers and miscellaneous purposes at a time when the county is simultaneously talking about millions in budget cuts.
The accusation has rankled her colleagues and prompted a strong reaction from her main opponent in the race for King County Executive, Girmay Zahilay, who has accused Balducci of executing a “desperate political stunt.”
The controversy started back on April 1, after a seemingly innocuous Employment and Administration Committee meeting. In that meeting, the council’s staff discussed directing $35,000 to each district representative. The meeting’s video is not available on the county’s website. Zahilay chairs the committee and the Council.
On April 18, the council’s Chief Operating Officer Janine Weihe sent an email to key council staffers suggesting she had “great news for all of you” and they would see “a line item of additional $35,000 to your budget” and “there are no restrictions on how the funds can be spent.”
Balducci said she was incensed as she had not asked for the money and said some councilmembers were seeking it for election mailers or flyers in a campaign cycle.
I asked why you are giving us this extra money? We were told that some offices wanted to do additional mailers to their districts and didn’t have enough money,” said Balducci in an interview. “I find this very unusual and very concerning, because we have rules and ethical standards about when we do mailers, when people are up for election, and it appears that this funding was specifically to fund council members’ offices who are running for election.
She provided emails to show that a few days after that, she wrote an email to Zahilay and senior staff, reading “On behalf of district 6, we do not need an extra allocation of funding because we are living within our budget and would request that the funding be put to a better purpose.”
“I mean, it could be used to pay for one or two staff members to work on important projects. We’re talking about cutting prosecuting attorneys who work on serious cases. We’re talking about cutting programs that prevent crime,” she said in an interview with KOMO News.
When asked if she thought it was a waste of money, Balducci didn’t hesitate, “I do, I do.”
But the allegation has upset some people inside the King County Council offices, who spent Friday downplaying the issue. KOMO News reached out to every council member asking for an explanation for their use of the $35,000.
Reagan Dunn, Sarah Perry, Jorge Baron, Rod Dembowski, and Zahilay all responded in short order. Teresa Mosqueda, Desean Quinn, and Pete Von Reichbauer did not. Zahilay declined to do an on-camera interview and was clearly angered about the allegation when reached by phone. He sent a statement to KOMO News.
“This is nothing more than a desperate political stunt by Councilmember Balducci.
The $35,000 adjustment to district office budgets was a simple internal reallocation — moving funds from one underspent administrative account to another, all within the legislative branch’s existing, approved budget. No new taxpayer dollars were added.
The change was proposed by nonpartisan staff, unanimously approved by the entire Employment Administration Committee, and intended to help council offices manage rising operational costs. I did not request, use, or amend this funding. Others proposed and led those efforts. Yet Councilmember Balducci is singling me out for one reason: scoring cheap political points.
She’s trailing in fundraising, endorsements, and grassroots support in her campaign for County Executive. So instead of offering a positive vision, she’s turning to baseless attacks. The public should be clear-eyed: despite promises of a positive campaign, her political stunts will continue to escalate as her campaign struggles.
I’ll continue focusing on the future, not on attacks and not on other candidates. I hope Councilmember Balducci chooses the same path, but I won’t hold my breath.” Dunn says his office doesn’t need the money.
In an email, he wrote:
“We never knew about it as it was happening, and did not request any adjustment to our budget, and it was an EAC issue. I do not serve on that committee. Last year, we gave back $41,338 from our 2023-24 budget to taxpayers, and we have given back money every year that I know of for the last ten years anyway. In short, we don’t expect to need that money for my office.”
Perry’s Chief of Staff, Libby Hollingshead, wrote, “Councilmember Perry’s office didn’t request this additional money, and our spending has and remains within our original budget allocation.”
Dembowski’s response was more nuanced. His Chief of Staff, Kristina Logsdon, wrote, “We are operating under a one-year budget cycle which provides for less flexibility than our typical two-year approach. District 1 appreciates Council administrative staff and the EAC exploring options to continue flexibility into this budget cycle.”
And Baron, who sits on the EAC, wrote a lengthy message to KOMO News outlining why the money was approved to transfer to district offices.
“To answer your question, our office (District 4) did not request an increase to our budgeted district allocation for 2025,” he wrote.
“What emerged (out of the meeting) was the option to internally re-allocate money that was budgeted for areas of council operations, which were expected to come in under budget, to the offices that requested additional resources. To pre-emptively address the concern that some offices were provided this flexibility while others were not, the ultimate decision was made to provide an increased allocation to every district office budget. While this may not have been expressly stated, my expectation was that this flexibility, if used, would be applied only to the extent necessary to address the challenges arising from the original concern. I also want to note that this EAC decision did not increase the overall council budget, but was solely a re-allocation of internal expense authority from one area expected to be underspent to another, where, for at least some offices, costs were now expected to be higher than originally anticipated.”
Still, Balducci argues that the money could have been moved for other purposes and faults the lack of transparency with that much money involved.
The questioning from KOMO News also led to a response from Stephanie Cirkovich, the Chief of Staff for the King County Council, who wrote that the council staff made the proposal and not any individual member.
“At an April 1 meeting to discuss council administration, County Council staff proposed reallocating funds from its central administration budget to each of the nine council districts. This is an internal reallocation from one budget line item to another; all of these funds have already been assigned to the legislative branch for 2025 and are included in the overall legislative branch budget. Staff proposed this adjustment after realizing that council districts would have to incur unexpected expenses in 2025, which is an annual budget rather than a biennial one—the proposal did not originate from councilmembers. I anticipate that the legislative branch will end the year under budget.”
When Balducci was asked if she was trying to score points against Zahilay in the Executive’s race, she replied, “I tried to handle this issue in-house before speaking. I asked (Zahilay) to consider that this didn’t look right or ethical, and I got no response. I felt that it was important to say something, because it does seem wrong, and King County doesn’t get a lot of attention.”
Balducci said, “We’ve got to be diligent with that trust and be transparent about what we’re doing, and this just didn’t meet that test for me.”
She continued, “I really wish we were talking about literally anything other than this.”
