Forslof retires after decades overseeing Whatcom County elections

Shirley Forslof spent more than half a century working in the Whatcom County Auditor's Office, including the last 24 years as the auditor. She was involved with or oversaw hundreds of elections, improved document recording and managed licensing.

But she still remembers her first interaction with the office: 1952, when she was 18 years old. She and her fiancé, Darwin Forslof, needed to pick up their wedding license after the three-day waiting period. He was on leave from the Navy.

"We had only a short time of leave to get here, get the license and get married," she recalled recently.

But it was either after office hours or on the weekend, so they visited Auditor Will Pratt's home to get the license.

Forslof's last day in the office as auditor was Friday, Dec. 30, when county officials threw her a retirement party. Forslof, 77, left a $97,000-a-year position for a retirement in which she plans to spend more time with her grandchildren and to volunteer in the community.

"I've thoroughly enjoyed it," Forslof said. "I wouldn't have wished, I think, for anything more."

Barbara Brenner, a County Council member for the past two decades, said Forslof always went the extra mile.

"The longer she'd worked there - you know how some people get burned out? She never did - she just did more," Brenner said. "She's one of the public servants that everybody wishes that all public servants would be."

FIRST ELECTION

The responsibility for overseeing elections really came home when she first stepped into the auditor's office after winning election to the open seat in 1987.

"I knew what we did, and I knew how to do it. But it was the realization that, suddenly, the responsibility was mine," she said.

By then, Forslof already had 28 years in the office, which first hired her in 1960. In 1970, she was hired as elections supervisor.

In November 1987, she beat former county commissioner Terry Unger, who also had experience overseeing elections in the office and the endorsement of retiring auditor Joan Ogden. In 1978 Forslof had run against Ogden but lost by 881 votes. Running on her experience, pledging no big changes and raising more campaign money than her opponent, Forslof won with 62.5 percent of the vote.

Experience in the office is important to winning the seat, she said. She ran for re-election unopposed every four years, except for 1999, when she beat Joe Elenbaas by getting 77.7 percent of the vote.

In November 2011 her chief deputy auditor, Debbie Adelstein, ran and won the auditor's seat with 61 percent of votes. Adelstein, who had Forslof's endorsement, also ran on experience.

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Upon taking office in 1988, Forslof immediately made small changes that improved operations and office morale, according to a March 24, 1988, Herald article. For example, when she took office, the recording and filing department took months to microfilm deeds and return them to the owners. After eliminating handwritten logs and using computer records, the delay was reduced to six days.

When she started, the office had one computer. She quickly bought more and trained staff on them.

In 2004, while the county looked at a new elections management system, a group of residents came to the County Council with questions. Forslof initially thought they were interested only in the new system, but they had other questions about elections processes.

"That's probably when I had underestimated what they were interested in," she said.

In response, she created the Citizens' Election Advisory Committee that reviews and provides feedback on election processes

Her biggest success, she said, was purchasing that new election management system in 2004 in preparation for joining the new statewide voter-registration system. Whatcom County was the first to join the system, which made it easier to detect and cancel old registrations when people moved and registered to vote elsewhere.

TOUGH TIMES

She never sleeps well before an election; she and Elections Supervisor Pete Griffin joke that it's a good omen, Forslof said.

But there were hard times while in office, she said. Running for office, she needed the support of family members because the election affected them too. They'd open the paper and read nasty letters to the editor targeting her.

"The family has to realize that even untruths may be said, and they are," she said.

To get through it, she concentrated on the big picture, remembering that she's putting herself out to the public and that working as auditor is noble.

"I've always felt like being an elected official is an honorable profession," Forslof said.

Also difficult was when the county debated whether to move its accounting functions from the Auditor's Office to the executive's purview. She felt having it under the auditor provided a check and balance on power, she said.

She insisted the question be put to voters, who in November 1993 voted 68 percent in favor of the charter amendment, which also created the Auditor's Office's internal audit division.

"I felt I was elected with that responsibility," she said. "Voters elected me with it, and it was the voters that would decide to remove it."

RETIREMENT

In March, Forslof announced she would retire at the end of her term.

"It just seemed like a good time. The office was in good shape," she said "I felt I could leave it in good hands."

She didn't want to wait another four years, when her health may not be as good, she said.

Before her husband, Darwin, died in July 2010, she promised him this would be her last term.

Forslof, a Bellingham resident, said she'll spend more time with her seven grandchildren, all of whom live in Whatcom County. She also plans to volunteer.

"I won't just go home and not participate," she said.

Looking back on her career, she has no regrets.

"I really felt like I did the best job that I could for the people of this county," she said.