This Seattle Weekly article on Ron Sims.

Some samples:

The county's yawning deficit is just one example of what some say is mounting evidence that Sims, in his effort to gain national recognition, has lost a handle on the day-to-day operations of his job.  There was the elections debacle of 2004, when hundreds of absentee ballots went uncounted while hundreds of provisional ballots were tallied without verifying voter eligibility; the deplorable jail conditions that resulted in a federal probe in 2007; the medical examiner's office employee arrested for stealing drugs from the dead earlier this year; a juvenile court building that's rotting; and animal shelter conditions so bad that the county wants to get out of the business entirely.

"Somewhere along the line, the county lost its focus, its mission of providing basic services like jail, Metro [buses], and elections," says Rollin Fatland, a former deputy county executive under Republican Tim Hill who also worked on Sims' 2004 gubernatorial bid and his 2005 re-election campaign.  "It ran into trouble straying and getting into areas that may not be a county mandate.  On a personal level, I have affection for Ron.  He's a nice man, but somewhere along the line he got off track."
. . .
Sims is a guy with big ideas.  He was on board early to combat climate change by establishing clean fleet standards for government vehicles, and saw to it that the county operates hybrid buses, which make up about 18 percent of its fleet.  He's also preserved more than 100,000 acres of forest land through the purchase of development rights, and led a tri-county effort to promote salmon recovery in the region's rivers and streams.

But Sims has never been a natural manager.  Case in point: the county's quest to modernize and meld its outdated computer systems.  In 2000, after three years, $39 million, and poor progress by project managers, Sims called off the effort to update and standardize the county's various payroll, accounting, and human-resources systems—something that's been desperately needed since the county merged with Metro in 1994.

From this article, I conclude — as I have before — that Sims is a decent, intelligent man, who means well, but is not suited to the office he now holds.  He is more a preacher — he is, after all, an ordained Baptist minister — than an executive.  The requirements for the two jobs are so different that very few people can do both well.

That he is a preacher explains his attachment to environmentalism, which is often best understood as a religion.  (Environmentalists sometimes borrow directly from ancient pagan religions.   Sierra Club members were not the first to worship big trees.)  And it helps explain his indifference to the effects of his policies on rural areas; if you are doing Gaia's work, then there is no reason to listen to those who may be hurt by your actions.

Sims is likely to draw another serious challenge in the next election, as the article notes, but I think it likely that he will survive and will stay in the office, despite his record.  We are probably stuck with him for some time.  And he with us, since it is unlikely that he will gain a national office.  (For obvious reasons, Obama has less need of Sims than Hillary Clinton did.)

(The article credits — I would say debits — Sims for saving light rail as chair of (un)Sound Transit.  Cost/benefit analysis is, evidently, not his strongest suit.)