Gov. Jay Inslee (center) with Ross Hunter (left of Inslee) and a group of young people who were being held in juvenile prisons in March 2020. (Children, Youth, and Families Department)
At least two lawmakers in Washington are calling for the resignation of Ross Hunter, the head of the Department of Children, Youth, and Families. This comes after the agency decided to stop taking new juveniles into two state prisons because they are already too full.
State Rep. Mari Leavitt (D) of University Place and Rep. Travis Couture (R) of Allyn both asked the director to step down on social media on Thursday. Hunter, a former Democratic state lawmaker and Microsoft general manager, has been critical of agency leadership in the past. This is the latest in a string of criticisms.
Leavitt said she wrote her post after a meeting on Thursday with the Washington State Partnership Council on Juvenile Justice, which is the state’s advisory group on juvenile justice issues. At the meeting, members were angry about Hunter’s “lack of leadership” and the way the Department of Children, Youth, and Families “blamed other entities.” Leavitt said that members were also mad that Hunter didn’t show up to the meeting, even though people from the department did.
This month, the department said it would stop putting sentenced youth in Green Hill School in Chehalis and Echo Glen Children’s Center in Snoqualmie, which are the only two medium and high security facilities in the state for juvenile offenders. The office said Green Hill was too full, which made them worry about safety.
“It became clear that there wasn’t a sense of taking responsibility and being accountable,” Leavitt said. “What bothers me and other people is that we could have done something about the problem if the agency had shown it to the Legislature in the right way.”
Leavitt thinks that next week the council will “certainly express very strong concerns” about Hunter’s leadership in a letter to Gov. Jay Inslee. However, the council has not confirmed that it will ask Hunter to step down.
The Standard spoke with Jaime Smith, a spokeswoman for Inslee’s office. Smith did not directly address the governor’s view on Hunter’s leadership, but she did defend the department.
“The department is facing a huge problem with the number of juveniles going up by 60% since 2023,” Smith said, adding that the agency is “doing their very best to solve it,” which includes “making hard but necessary choices to protect the safety of the kids and staff at Green Hill School.”
“They are determined to work with lawmakers and stakeholders,” Smith said.
Hunter told the Standard to get a comment from the Department of Children, Youth, and Families’ media team over the phone, and then hung up quickly.
Hunter was at the Tribal Opioid Summit in Spokane on Thursday, according to an email from department spokesperson Allison Krutsinger. The agency has “no formal comment on the calls for resignation that emerged yesterday,” the email said.
“Recent actions we took in juvenile rehabilitation were focused on making sure the safety of the kids we work with and the staff who work with them,” Krutsinger said. “These were hard choices to make.” A lot of different people have different ideas about youth justice.
But Republicans, Democrats, and families of youth in detention criticized the Department of Children, Youth, and Families for how it ran Washington’s juvenile detention system. For example, the department sent 43 young men between the ages of 21 and 25 from Green Hill to state jail. That decision was overturned when, on July 19, a judge in Thurston County Superior Court told the department to bring the men back to Green Hill within two weeks. This was a preliminary finding that was upheld on Friday.
Leavitt said, “This wasn’t a reflection of the 43 young people who were moved.” The things they were meant to be doing were being done. They were going to school, so things were getting better. This shows how badly the system is broken. There is a problem with the system, and I think DCYF is to blame.
Leavitt said she was also afraid about the safety of the staff because there were so many people.
The Department of Children, Youth, and Families said in a statement on Friday that the new court decision will “put the safety of residents and staff at Green Hill at risk.” The government is going to ask the court to put off making a decision until it can file an emergency appeal. The head of the Council on Juvenile Justice, Gordon McHenry, said that the fact that the department is going to fight the finding makes him even more worried about Hunter’s ability to lead.
According to McHenry, it’s important that they work directly with the young men who have been hurt and their families to figure out the best way to fix the problem. He also said that the letter will at least include “grave concerns” about “the harm that is occurring to youth under the care of DCYF.”
Critics say that calls for Hunter’s resignation are coming from both Democrats and Republicans. They point to a vote of no confidence in the head that was started last year by the union that represents staff at the Department of Children, Youth, and Families.
About 1,000 of the 2,800 people who work in the department voted against Hunter. The union says that the vote happened because he “ignores the work we do and doesn’t care about the issues we raise,” which has put children and staff at risk.
Couture said, “I think there is a continuously reducing number of people in Olympia that have a lot of faith in Ross Hunter to do this job.” He also said that Hunter seems like a “failed political appointment” from the point of view of Republicans.
Couture also said Hunter hasn’t been a good leader in all of the department’s areas of responsibility, such as child welfare, foster care, child care, and more. She also said that politicians from both parties probably have an area of concern that the agency works on that is important to them.
“People want things to happen in their communities.” Coque said, “When you’re not getting the results, that’s sometimes where the partisanship ends.”
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