It's about damn time.

"The lone act of integrity available to you is to simply pay your dues to the Republican Party. "

That was kind of fun to watch.

All of this may be true but from my viewpoint, Sonntag was a good and capable state auditor. The office was well-run, professional and certainly outed some real issues (especially in Seattle schools).

Sonntag must think this is some state full of hillbillies like N. Carolina. We're onto you Republican anti-worker assholes.

I'm glad Pelz called him out. Remember that nasty "guest opinion" by some flack at Sonntag's foundation that Crosscut posted last week? The one trying to make hay about sick leave?

Yeah, Sonntag's jumped the fence, shark, whatever. Good on Dwight. Thanks for posting this, you.

@3 I felt that Sonntag abused his performance audits power to turn it into an adversarial and punitive process. I also thought his press releases consistently exaggerated the inefficiencies found and the "savings" that could be realized. He took advantage of the fact that most people—including journalists—didn't really know the difference between a financial audit and performance audit, which are two different beasts entirely.

And what we never got was a performance audits of the performance audits to see whether we realized an savings at all.

How many billions of taxpayer dollars did Brian Sonntag save us, including you Goldy, during his tenure as state auditor -- dollars that Dwight Pelz was all for wasting on stupid government shit?

Curious -- will Dwight support reading out of HIS party scummy buggers like Anthony Weiner, Eliot Spitzer and Bob Filner, the brain trust behind the REAL war on women...the Democratic Party's war on women?

Dear "Crack-Piper"...

Please see comment #8, douchebag.

What the fuck, dude? Aren't you in Massachusetts or advising tea-hadi's in MAINE or something?...or did you get fired from there too...

Sonntag was a horrible auditor. The performance audit sham is the sick love child of Tim Eyman and Frank Blethen, with Sonntag as its demented governess.

The new auditor has actually had to hire an ambassador to convince local governments to participate in performance auditing; many refused to even call Sonntag's office for advice, knowing they would be blasted in public for minor foot faults to satiate Sonntag's endless appetite for publicity.

Sonntag was a blowhard publicity hound who craved being in the limelight. He had no interest whatsoever in improving the audit function. Audits are so late (18 months after fiscal year-end is typical) that local governments are often in violation of federal securities regulations governing financial disclosure.

The entire office should be outsourced to the private sector (as it is in virtually every other state).

Good on Pelz for calling out this anti-government hack.

Pope Peabrain's comment above (Comment 4) shows in fact he is accurately named!

Based on his comment (#4), Pope Peabrain is certainly accurately named. Sonntag is a moderate and obviously few people on this blog are. Moderates are a group we need more of so our legislature can accomplish something, in spite of the void at the top now sitting in the Governor's chair!

Democrats do not like government accountability and hated that he actually expected government contracts to not be corrupt...

@8 Okay, how many billions did Sonntag save us? I've no idea whether he saved us a penny. Or cost of millions conducting ineffective adversarial performance audits. Just because he'd issue a press release saying an agency would save X amount of dollars if they followed the recommendations in the performance audit, doesn't the agency ever would or did. The least accountable function of state government were the performance audits themselves.

He took a great idea and turned it into a political cudgel that worked against the very mission of performance audits.

Wait... Pelz's big example of an anti-union agenda was a First Amendment case in which the Supreme Court UNANIMOUSLY decided the unions were acting improperly? Does this suddenly mean that Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter, and Stevens are suddenly supposed to be anti-union shills?

Why does Dwight Pelz dress up like this? http://the-governed.blogspot.com/2013/02…

Sonntag knows where all the political skeletons have been buried during the last 20 years. Now he's joined an organization that makes a mission of unearthing political skeletons.

Pelz chairs the state Democratic party that has been in power for 20+ years. That's 20+ years of political skeletons.

Given Pelz's extreme reaction over the doings of a RETIRED politician, those must be some juuuuuuicy skeletons. (I smell a movie!)

Pelz is right. Retired or not, Sonntag knows too much, and he must be discredited before he unveils the skeletons.

I love the smell of Washington state politics in the morning.