Spokane Republican Dale Whitaker is one of two Republicans — and three candidates overall — in the race for an open county auditor office.
"I've been an accountant for about 18 years now. I have a small tax practice here in Spokane. I've run that for about a decade now, maybe a little more," he said.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Dale Whitaker: I was the chief financial officer of a national precious metals firm and while I was there, I uncovered systemic fraud within a certain segment of the industry. I quit my job and I blew the whistle on that company and I've spent the last eight years recovering funds for victims of financial fraud. In that time, I've recovered over $30 million for victims.
DN: Victims all over the country?
DW: Yeah, all of the country. All of these precious metals firms, they advertise nationally, and so if they have had this done to them, they reach out to me and then we go through a process. I'm probably 80% successful in getting them the majority of their funds back.
DN: People don't just on a whim decide to run for office. How did you make the decision to run for auditor?
DW: The reality is that the Spokane County Auditor's Office is something that a lot of folks don't understand what they do, but it's actually very, very important. It's a boring job. It's not exciting. You're not gonna go to work every day and you're not throwing a party and you're not arguing with your fellow council members or anything like this. But it's very, very important.
We handle a billion dollars, almost a billion dollars now in countywide spending. And when I looked at the candidate pool, I just felt like I was the most qualified and decided this is what I'm gonna throw my hat in the ring for.
I think my qualities and my professional background really lend to this position and I think that I can really, really do a good service for the people of Spokane County.
DN: It's an office that has become known for the elections for the most part, but what you're saying is it's broader than the elections.
DW: Yeah. The Auditor's Office oversees licensing, records, elections, and financial services. One of the misconceptions is that we deal with budget. We don't deal with the budget. We are responsible for paying the bills and that's a billion dollars. Like I said, almost a billion dollars of spending on countywide bills and payroll.
So, for me, I think when I want someone doing that job, I want someone qualified. I want someone that's done the job and I want someone that's willing to speak up when they see something that may be a little untoward. So I think it's really important that we have a county auditor that fundamentally understands accounting processes and systems. That's why I believe I'm the best candidate for the job.
DN: If you're elected, what sort of influence do you hope to have?
DW: Really, I think the big thing is we need to get together with the countywide elected officials and we need to really work on our processes.
I've talked to a lot of the countywide electeds and the financial systems that have been put in place aren't great. Employee morale seems to be very low and I think that being able to go in there day one, be able to see what needs to be fixed, what needs to function properly, bring employee morale up, bring efficiency up, so we can bring our costs down, and then just use the auditor's office to make sure that our countywide electeds and our countywide processes are good and I think that this is a good way to do that.
DN: Are there particular areas that you think are weak? We talked about a broad variety of areas, but is there one or two areas in specific that you would aim for?
DW: I would say records is probably the strongest, but I think even with licensing, I wanna work with our partners to say, how do we get the customer service wait times down? What processes can we implement? Where are the bottlenecks? What processes can we implement so that folks aren't waiting 30, 40 minutes to go in and get new license plates or register a new vehicle, whatever it may be? I wanna work with our partners to make sure that we're streamlining those processes so that people in the county can hopefully be in and out in 10 minutes or less.
Again, the accounting system that they've just implemented, from my understanding, is not good. That needs to be worked on. I've built accounting systems from the ground up. So I think that those are the key ones.
And then in elections, there's things that we need to make sure that we're doing, making sure that we're counting all the ballots as quickly and efficiently as possible. I think that we need to make sure that our chain of custody is really good and we need to make sure that our signature verification is strengthened.
DN: Do you think it's not a very good system right now?
DW: I think that there's ways we can absolutely look at any system and you can improve it. I think that that's true for elections, it's true for financial services, it's true for the licensing division. There's always improvement that can be made. What I wanna do is just make sure that those processes, when it comes to elections or financial services, are being looked at and we're doing what we can as efficiently as possible.
DN: Tell me about an elected official you admire and why.
DW: Oh, that's a tough one.
Winston Churchill is one that I really admire. He spent a good decade being ridiculed by the ruling class, let's say, about his forewarnings of what Hitler was doing and I think that to have that foresight and to be able to lead a country and a world, really, through one of the biggest events in world history, I think that, for all of his flaws, the man was dead set on abolishing evil and I think that was, I think I would have to go with Churchill.
DN: So what kind of leader are you? You would be stepping into a completely new office. How would you get to those people who have worked in that office for a long time to respect you and believe that you're doing a good job?
DW: I believe that a leader is only as strong as their weakest link. So you wanna be able to go in there on day one and instill confidence in people and let them know that they can trust you. That's one of the things that I do when I work with people is I let them know, hey, we might disagree on political issues, but we're not here to be politicians, we're here to provide service. I want my employees to know that, if there's something you think we can improve, come to me. It might be a good idea. It might be a bad idea, but let's look at all of the ideas. Let's get together. You've been here a long time. You know what processes work. You know what processes you hate. Let's look at these and let's improve. Let's improve together.
I think day one, I'm gonna go in and I wanna have a meeting with my team and just say, forget everything you think you know about me and you've heard on the street or whatever it may be. I'm here to help you be the best at what you can do and I want you to help me be the better leader that I can be.
When you have that level of trust where people believe they can come to you with anything and there's no repercussions, and that honesty is the foremost characteristic of everything that we do, people will follow that and they like to look at that.
DN: How do you want voters to evaluate candidates for county auditor?
DW: Look, this is a resume race, right? This is a quintessential resume race. So what that means is you have to look at the resumes of the people who are running and you have to think, would I hire this person to do this job for me if I were to hire this person, right? And so when you look at this and you look at all the resumes side by side, I'm really the only qualified candidate on the ballot for this position. Again, over almost two decades, 18 years experience in accounting and financial management, I've owned my own small tax practice here in town, serving small businesses here in Spokane and beyond actually. They need someone that they can trust with knowing the processes, knowing procedure, knowing accounting is.
People like to talk about elections and elections are very important, don't get me wrong, but a billion dollars of spending of countywide money, that's a lot of money and it's only growing. That budget is only growing. We need someone at the helm that can go in on day one and can fundamentally understand accounting systems.
DN: What are lessons you've learned from other elected officials who maybe you've been around about how to be effective?
DW: It's a broad term, effectiveness, because there's only so much you can do within the purview. We don't legislate anything in the auditor's office, but really communication is the biggest key and being able to talk to people, being willing to talk to people.
Like I said, day one, talk to my staff. Hey, what works, what doesn't work? I want the list. I wanna see what works, what doesn't work? And everyone's gonna have their own opinion, but let's get to a place where we can say, okay, these are the core things we're gonna focus on right now, these are the things we're gonna put on the back burner, Then let's move forward on these issues.
