The Ring of Corruption: How King County’s Auditor Hid the Books

County Finances.

Mr. Gardner Kellogg, for many years County Auditor of King County, was some months since questioned through the public prints in regard to the financial affairs of the county, of which no definite or consistent report had ever been made during his term of office. The officer, from long use, had come to regard the office as belonging to himself and not to the people, deemed all such questions impertinent and insulting, and refused to answer or give any explanation of his official acts. Subsequently Mr. Kellogg resigned [his] candidacy for another term to which he had been nominated, and now he comes out in his personal and party organ with a communication pretending to give the information sought, and explaining the reasons for not giving it before, promising his explanation with the statement that for doing a small part of the labor asked of me, our County Sheriff paid an accountant the modest sum of $850, and in the position they made no provision for necessary compensation.

That Mr. Kellogg's motive was for making this last communication we will not pretend to fathom. What purpose he has served by it, we are not able to discover. He has not accounted for a single discrepancy between the receipts and expenditures of the County as he before reported. He has not given a single new fact of the least practical use in arriving at any conclusion as to whether the financial affairs of the county are judiciously managed or otherwise. The expense of making a statement of the financial affairs of the county is no excuse for neglecting a manifest duty.

The Auditor is the accounting officer of the county, and nothing is more clearly within the line of his duty than to present, at stated periods, an intelligible balance sheet of its financial transactions and condition. If the Auditor's official report, or his perfunctory address give any adequate idea of the literal transactions of our county officials, then the whole batch are grossly incompetent or viciously corrupt. We find, and have heretofore shown from the Auditor's report, balances struck which do not correspond by thousands of dollars with the detailed statements of receipts and expenditures; gross amounts appropriated for interest which do not correspond with the principal of the outstanding indebtedness; conversion of securities without authority of law with no explanation of the amount, kind or nature of such securities; appropriations made and put upon interest in advance of the work or considerations which said appropriations were calculated to meet.

We have no explanation of any of these discrepancies, but an elaborate statement to show that the discrepancies in the report of the road fund are chiefly attributable to the neglect of supposed road supervisors, not one of whom has ever been called to account according to law, and that no settlement has ever been made between the county and city, the collector for both being the same identical officer. This is upon the hypothesis that L. V. Wyckoff, the City Marshal, has made no settlement with L. V. Wyckoff, the Sheriff of the County; that the Marshal returns the taxes collected in the city to the city treasurer, and returns the same to himself as Sheriff as delinquent on the county books.

It was the loose, improvident, not to say dishonest manner, in which our county affairs were conducted to which we called public attention, and it has only been made a personal matter by the assumption of Mr. Gardner Kellogg that he was the sole responsible public officer of the county, the regent and head centre of the ring, exercising prerogatives which belong only to sovereignty; and in his valedictory address to his subjects he evidently thinks that the whole matter is settled by resigning his clerkship.

We propose to look after these matters hereafter just the same as if the light of Gardner Kellogg's genius had never been reflected upon them, and there are people in this county who are clearly of the opinion that the affairs of the County can be managed by an honest and intelligent Board of Commissioners with a good clerk quite as well as when they had the benefit of Mr. Kellogg’s great executive ability.