The August 4 primary election is less than two weeks away, but here's something to keep in mind for the general election in November: In King County, you're going to get to vote on whether to bolster civilian oversight of the King County Sheriff's Office, thanks to a contentious charter amendment that the county council, after a 5-4 vote, has placed on the fall ballot.

"This is an opportunity for the people of King County to have a voice in the direction of investigating matters of misconduct in the sheriff’s office," said Council Member Larry Gossett after the council vote on Monday evening.

For over a decade, the county has sought to expand the powers of a civilian-led oversight agency called the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight (OLEO)—the sheriff's department equivalent of the Seattle Police Department's Office of Professional Accountability (OPA)—according to Council Member Larry Phillips.

But, Phillips says, "The police guild has made it very difficult for anybody at King County to get anything done." OLEO itself has in the past been hampered by leadership issues, and this month the county auditor found that OLEO is weak in key ways.

King County sheriff John Urquhart (a certified badass who fired seven officers last year for misconduct) has concerns about the amendment. "I think it’s important for the voters to understand that any changes to discipline, or the approach to discipline, has to be negotiated with the Guild and the five other unions in the Sheriff's Office," he wrote in an e-mailed statement. "Like it or lump it, that's state law. Even if changes are enshrined in a Charter amendment, those changes will still need to be negotiated... We made very good progress in the last bargaining session with the Guild, for example, and significantly expanded OLEO's oversight and functions. Further changes will come from finesse, not from a sledge hammer."

The council is taking the sledgehammer approach anyway. Phillips says he's told the sheriff, "I keep saying it's not about you, John. There are likely to be sheriffs in the future who aren't as vigorous as you are [on officer accountability]... It has to be systemic."

Urquhart, Gossett says, "has gotten rid of some very bad deputies after doing a thorough investigation and then dealing with it right away. It's not about this sheriff. It's about whether we think the civilian oversight entity ought to have certain enforcement authority and oversight."

To no avail, the conservative-learning bloc of the county council—members Reagan Dunn, Kathy Lambert, Jane Hague, and Pete von Reichbauer—voted against placing the charter amendment on the ballot. If adopted by the voters, according to the county council, the amendment would:

· Establish OLEO as charter-based agency,
· Establish OLEO’s Citizen’s Advisory Committee as a charter-based panel,
· Make the appointment of the OLEO Director and the members of the Citizen’s Advisory Committee the responsibility of the Council and not the County Executive,
· Broaden the responsibilities of the Citizen Advisory Committee. It would review, advise, and report on OLEO in a manner prescribed by ordinance. The committee would also be required to advise the Sheriff and the Council on matters of equity and social justice related to law enforcement and would be permitted to advise the Sheriff and the Council on any systemic problems and opportunities for improvement in the law enforcement practices of the Department of Public Safety,
· Broaden OLEO’s scope of authority, permitting OLEO itself to investigate the conduct of law enforcement officers that results in a complaint or that involves the use of force, rather than being limited to monitoring investigations conducted by KCSO’s Internal Investigation Unit (IIU),
· Extend OLEO’s oversight to matters involving the use of force by county law enforcement officers, even in the absence of a complaint.

Get ready to hear a lot more about this in the lead-up to November.