(The Center Square) – Seattle Councilmember Maritza Rivera is calling for a formal audit of the city’s Human Services Department contracts, but the review won’t be getting immediate attention because the auditor’s office has a backlog.
Rivera, in a statement last week, said she was concerned about a King County audit that found lax financial oversight at the County Department of Community and Human Services.
The audit, which dates back to August 2025, found that King County Department of Community and Human Services staff permitted potential fraud, misused funds and made numerous improper payments to contractors.
“The City works with many of the same human service organizations as the County, so it is important for us to ensure our contracts have adequate oversight and accountability,” Rivera said
Acting City Auditor Arushi Thakorla said in a statement to The Center Square on Monday that he has been in contact with the councilwoman.
“We agree with the Councilmember that it is crucial for City contracts to have adequate oversight and accountability,” Thakoria said. “While our office is currently at capacity with other work requested by the City Council through fall 2026, we will continue to coordinate with the Councilmember’s office and further evaluate this request as more resources become available.”
Thakoria said he has an audit staff of five, and the office has been in transition since the December 2025 retirement of auditor David Jones.
The 2025 county audit received renewed attention last month when King County Executive Girmay Zahilay issued a new executive order to strengthen the county’s financial oversight and governance practices.
This includes a new internal audit function in the County Executive’s Office, the creation of a new Subcabinet with senior leaders across departments and expanded ethics and fraud prevention training requirements for employees who oversee contracts.
Last August, the damning King County audit showed that money was being spent at the county Department of Community and Human Services faster than anyone could track.
Between 2019 and 2024, the Department of Community and Human Services saw its grant awards double, from $922 million to $1.87 billion.
Much of this money came from the “Best Starts for Kids” levy, a decade-long promise to the region’s youth, funded by King County property owners.
It has totaled more than $2 billion in additional taxes since 2015.
The Community and Human Services Department’s own rulebook was clear: every year, county guidelines required deep-dive financial “health checks” on a third of their grantees.
King County Auditor Kymber Waltmunson said back in August that the department had checked only 2% of its partners in 2022. By 2023, that number dropped to 1%.
Waltmunson spoke before the County Council last August, saying that she “was alarmed by the level of internal control failure we encountered.”
“In the rush to hand out nearly $2 billion, the county had left the vault door wide open, failing to perform even the most basic checks on where the money was going or how it was being spent,” she said.
The audit also examined 36 youth programs that received $34 million in funding.
It found that the county paid $7,000 to a contractor who had tampered with an original $1,000 invoice.
Additionally, officials discovered $37,500 in travel expenses billed after a contract had already expired and hundreds of thousands of dollars in unauthorized payments made by county vendors to unapproved subcontractors.
The King County Office of the Ombuds, an independent county office, began an investigation into contractor fraud following the audit.
“It’s important to note that at this time no fraud or improper payments have been confirmed”, said Hannah Kurowski, a spokeswoman for the County Department of Community and Human Services, in an email to The Center Square. “Once the external investigation that is being overseen by the Ombuds Office is completed, we will know more and take appropriate action as needed.”
Kurowski said on April 1 that fraud training had started for all department staff.
