Every county in Washington State is unique. Our largest county, King, has a population approaching 2.3 million and includes the cities of Seattle and Bellevue. King County is politically liberal, racially diverse and spans multiple ecosystems ranging from the Salish Sea to the Cascade Mountains. Each of the nine King County councilmembers represents more than 255,000 people.

Our smallest county is Garfield County in southwest Washington, with a population of not quite 2,500 people. Garfield County is a politically conservative county in the Palouse with one incorporated town (Pomeroy) and a population that is more than 96% white. Each of the three Garfield County Commissioners represents between 800-850 people.

So what on earth could these two counties have in common, and what might these two extremes have in common with a mid-sized county like ours? The answer, remarkably, is quite a bit!

For example, all counties share a common suite of responsibilities. One of the most important is to ensure that our Sixth Amendment right to a public defense is upheld. While the scale of activity differs from county to county, the need to determine how to provide and pay for this Constitutional guarantee is the same for all of us.

Because our state lags nearly all others in the dollars allocated to counties to provide this protection, every county no matter the size struggles to resource this function. Because there are not enough public defenders in our state, every county struggles to maintain a pool of attorneys sufficient for meeting the need. Therefore, all counties work together to identify and advocate for solutions to these challenges.

All counties also share a common suite of concerns. One of the more interesting that has been a recent focus of attention has to do with how renewable energy production and storage facilities are taxed. Counties like Garfield in Eastern Washington have been on the front lines with regard to this topic since that is where the wind blows.

A new wind energy facility in a small community like Garfield County can have a huge impact on the local tax base, significantly raising property tax collections. However, in some instances much of this new value is in the equipment, which gets depreciated over time. This results in a “tax shift” to all other payers of local property tax who are left with an artificially-inflated property tax responsibility.

As data farms and large battery storage facilities come online in Western Washington, communities on this side of the Cascades are beginning to experience and understand the pressures that Eastern Washington communities have been feeling for years. Therefore all counties are all working together to ensure that local property taxpayers don’t get left with the bill.

Because we all share responsibilities and concerns, county leaders in our state work hard to learn from each other. For example, I recently discovered that Chelan County has an innovative program that centers around a public assistance fund for landlords who can tap into the fund should their properties experience excessive damage from tenants.

We know that many potential landlords in our county hesitate to rent a room or a vacant home that may be available due to concerns about potential damage. Perhaps we can model Chelan’s strategy and free up additional much-needed rental housing units in our county.

Other counties are learning from us, too. For example, we are building a “combined services” model to streamline the provision of all of the behavioral and physical health care required for individuals incarcerated in both our adult and juvenile facilities. This model will also allow us to take advantage of new laws that allow many of these health care services to be billed to Medicaid rather than being the responsibility of local taxpayers. Numerous other counties are watching our progress and regularly asking questions.

Much of this information-sharing occurs thanks to the work of the Washington State Association of Counties which is the organization that supports all county commissioners and council members across the state and I am happy to relate that all three of Clallam County’s commissioners are active in the Association where we work hard to identify policies, programs and ideas that could benefit the people of our unique corner of the state.