State · King County · Seattle · Regional bodies · 87 cases on file

Watchdogs are only as good as the public's attention span.

Every accountability failure on the record across four layers of Washington government, in one place.

Because the news cycle forgets, and the receipts shouldn't.

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87 Cases on file

$73.82B Dollars at issue · program totals, overruns, and questioned spending combined. Not a loss figure.

4 Layers of government

Featured · Refreshed monthly

The cases drawing the most heat right now.

Ranked monthly across legal posture, evidence tier, dollars at issue, primary sourcing, recency, and cross-references. See Methodology for the full ranking criteria.

KCRHA forensic audit — $13M unaccounted, $44.7M negative cash position documented

$13M Structural failure · Misuse of public resources Editor pinned
Sound Transit ST3 program-wide cost shortfall — $22–34.5B over 2016 finance plan, formal program reset announced documented

$34.50B Structural failure · Misuse of public resources Editor pinned
Washington State Legislative Ethics Board — Enforcement-pattern assessment (2015–2026): ~14% sanction rate, $5,000 maximum penalty unchanged since 1994, ~2 public hearings in 32 years documented

Structural failure · Aggregate liability Editor pinned
DCHS contract oversight failure — $1.8B+ program, ~1% of spending reviewed documented

$1.80B Structural failure · Misuse of public resources
Seattle Public Schools — $16M settlement over Garfield High School coach sexual abuse documented

$16M Structural failure · Misuse of public resources

$34.50B

Sound Transit ST3 program

$22–34.5B over 2016 finance plan, formal program reset announced

$30B

OSPI school funding apportionment system

SAO performance audit finds $30B-per-biennium system at 'high risk for catastrophic failure'

$1.80B

DCHS contract oversight failure

$1.8B+ program, ~1% of spending reviewed

$502M

FY25 WA state tort payouts bigger than FY23+FY24 combined

$2.5B in pending claims, liability account facing $569M shortfall

Every case links to primary-source documents: audits, court filings, ethics opinions, and named-byline reporting. Each case is connected to the specific structural reform that would have prevented or surfaced it. The registry is intentionally narrow. Other Washington cities are out of scope for now and may be added in later phases. We do not publish anonymous tips, partisan commentary, or rumor.

About this project

A reference, not a publication.

The registry is maintained as a public-record reference, not a news outlet. See Methodology for how cases enter, get updated, or get retracted, and About for editorial policy and disclosures.

Data

Take the data with you.

Researchers, journalists, and policy staff: the registry is machine-readable. Source is on GitHub, the full case set is downloadable, and updates publish to RSS as new cases are added.

Case CSV export

Every case with id, title, actors, dollars, severity, reforms, sources. Regenerated on each build.
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RSS feed

50 most recent cases, with full body snippets, severity categories, and pub dates.
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Source on GitHub

Every case is a YAML+Markdown file in a public repo. File an issue, submit a correction, or fork it.
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Sitemap

Machine-readable index of every page in the registry for crawlers and link checkers.
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Why this exists

One case is a story. Eighty-seven is a pattern.

Washington produces a steady stream of audits, indictments, and ethics rulings. They scroll past in the news and disappear. The registry keeps the receipts in one place, connected to the reforms that would have stopped them.

Browse all 87 cases → See the reforms →