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New King County Executive, Girmay Zahilay inherited two major financial cleanup projects when taking office late last year.

One came to light last August before he was in office.

An audit of the Department of Community and Human Services found potential fraud and numerous improper payments for contractors, and made recommendations for needed improvements.

In April, the first follow-up audit of the department found it has made significant progress.

All ten recommendations are on pace to be achieved.

That means fraud prevention training and means more site visits to actually put eyes and ears on programing to make sure that there's that accountability.

It means assessing and moving away from risky payment models.

It means better invoicing.

All of those recommendations are on track to be met, and I think there is way more work that we can and should and must do, and that is my expectation.

Last month, an audit of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority also found at least $13 million in funds were unaccounted for.

In our one on one interview with Executive Zahilay, which we conducted on April 29th, we asked him about this new crisis.

Two King County Council members are calling to disband that agency.

You haven't gone that far.

What kind of changes are you considering based upon the steps that the agency has taken?

I would say that those findings in that forensic report were shocking and unacceptable.

And in the short term, the Seattle Mayor and I have put forward a list of requirements for the agency to respond to that will stabilize the organization, that will hold it accountable.

So in the short term, a lot of changes need to happen.

The status quo is unacceptable.

What we do in the long term is something that needs to be carefully vetted and understood before we take drastic actions, like treating this agency like it's a light switch that can turn on and off.

It's not.

There are contracts.

There is federal funding at risk.

There are people's jobs.

And most importantly, there are services that we don't want to disrupt to the people who are living unhoused on the ground.

We have to have the requisite level of confidence that whatever changes we make, whether that's within this organization or away from this organization, are going to be better than what we have.

And that takes a lot of work.

It requires us to move urgently, but methodically and thoughtfully at the same time.

Let's get back to talking about The Department of Community and Human Services.

As it stands today, taxpayers are looking, from what we've heard, transparency.

How do you plan to ensure that taxpayers receive that transparency and that trust in this department?

My "Better Government" executive order last month is designed to achieve accountability.

And so a few things that we're doing are, number one, we have hired an internal audit director.

This is somebody who is going to look at all of our departments across all of our functions in King County and identify any risks, make recommendations for what needs to change, make recommendations for how we can hold every department accountable and protect taxpayer dollars.

We're also, for the first time in history, going to do a base budget analysis.

That means we're going to build our budgets from the ground up.

That's going to allow us to take a microscope and look at all of our programs, everywhere that we're spending money, find cost savings, find the programs that are delivering results, sunset the programs that are not delivering results and really and truly hold ourselves accountable financially.

To see our full interview with King County Executive, Girmay Zahilay, visit CascadePBS.org/TheNewsfeed.