Miriam Mboya Calls for People-Centered Government and Budget Stewardship on The Pop-Up!
King County Council District 2 candidate Miriam Mboya recently outlined her vision for a more responsive, accountable, and people-centered county government on The Pop-Up!. Joining host The Big O, Mboya critiqued current spending practices and offered proposals for the region's affordability and homelessness crises.
Internal Expertise and Fiscal Responsibility
Mboya, who immigrated from Kenya and grew up in Skyway, Washington before attending Seattle University, said her motivation to run stems from her perspective as a frustrated resident. Rather than seeking further tax increases to fund public services, she argued that King County's $20 billion biennial budget contains ample room for better stewardship and internal reallocation.
"After being there for seven years, I don't believe we need to keep raising more taxes," Mboya said, referencing her background in budgeting, contracting, and partnerships. "We need to steward what we have. Twenty billion dollars…that's a lot of money.”
Mboya criticized the lack of tangible results relative to the size of the county budget, expressing frustration with recent accountability failures, such as $13 million missing from the regional housing authority. To fix this, she urged council members to get directly involved in the inner workings of the county bureaucracy.
"I want to see more council members entering King County and working alongside the 18,000 staff members, sitting down on budget meetings, being able to question: Why is this being allocated here? Why is this amount of money needed here? What is it going to yield?” she said.
Categorizing the Homelessness Crisis
Drawing on her own past experience with homelessness, Mboya pushed back against the narrative that the crisis is unsolvable or entirely driven by a single factor. She argued that regional strategies rely too heavily on academic theories rather than concrete outreach, leading to inefficient "trial and error and a wastage of money."
"I think we need to categorize homelessness because not everybody is because of lack of affordability," she said, noting that distinct segments of the unhoused population require specialized mental and behavioral health intervention.
She recalled a conversation with an unhoused individual who warned that simply providing physical housing without concurrent healthcare often backfires, leaving vulnerable people exposed to exploitation by drug dealers.
To build viable solutions, Mboya insisted that leaders must roll up their sleeve" and spend more time directly on the streets listening to individual stories.
"We need council members... to go into the streets and talk and listen to these individuals,” she said.
Practical Affordability Reforms
Addressing the broader displacement of families and working-class residents due to gentrification and high living costs, Mboya highlighted a direct link between regional housing pressures and public sector operations. She noted that many King County employees are actively resisting mandates to return to the office in Seattle because they have been priced out of the county entirely and forced to move south.
To mitigate these pressures, Mboya advocated for rent caps within the county to prevent arbitrary and sudden price hikes by landlords. Furthermore, she proposed targeted structural relief through the tax system and existing levies:
Senior Property Tax Relief: Mboya proposed eliminating property taxes entirely for seniors past a certain age to prevent fixed-income elders from losing their homes to rising tax burdens.
Expanding Child Care Subsidies: Utilizing the county's multimillion-dollar Best Starts for Kids levy, Mboya stated her intent to raise the income eligibility cap for dual-income household child care subsidies from $80,000 to $100,000.
Ideology vs. Solution-Oriented Governance
Mboya repeatedly returned to the core tenet of her campaign: shifting government focus away from partisan politics and toward clear, community-driven communication. She said that county officials have neglected regular town halls, which she believes are essential to integrating public voices into critical legislative and budgetary agreements.
"We need to stop getting hung up on Democrat, Republican, socialist. Can we focus on the solutions?" she said. "Because when we focus on the solutions, then we're able to call out things and we're able to be real about what and how we need to approach these issues. I think a lot of times when we focus so much on these ideologies, then we lose the point as to what are we trying to achieve here."
Concluding her pitch to the voters of District 2, Mboya reminded the audience that structural change requires a fundamental reset in the relationship between elected officials and the public.
"We must carry your voice into those chambers," she said. "We're not carrying our interest."
Learn more about Mboya’s campaign at electmiriam.com
Primary Election Day is Tuesday, August 4th. Ballots must be postmarked by this date or returned to a ballot drop box by 8 p.m.
Tune in to The Pop-Up! weekdays live at 7 p.m. on all Converge streaming platforms.
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