OPINION: If Selection Process for New County Manager  Is A Done Deal – That’s Not Good

Washoe County Commissioners will be announcing a high-impact decision in the next few days regarding who the county’s next County Manager will be.

The County recently announced the 4 finalists.

• Two of them are out-of-state administrators in counties with much smaller populations than Washoe’s.

• One of the finalists is a Director for Washoe County’s bus company.

• The fourth finalist is Washoe County’s current Interim County Manager, Kate Thomas, who has been filling the position since June, 2025 when former County Manager Eric Brown retired. Thomas had been Washoe County’s Assistant Manager since 2017. She is likely the odds-on favorite to get this top County job.

However, if Interim Manager Kate Thomas IS handed the County Manager job, it will be no cause for celebration. 

It will simply guarantee that Washoe County Commissioners will have hired still one MORE over-hyped and under-qualified Manager with no demonstrated record of success in making tough, principled, and creative decisions on big issues – the kind of leadership that Washoe County desperately needs.

Kate Thomas has been Washoe’s Assistant County Manager for approximately 8 years. One of her larger responsibilities has been overseeing the management of the exploding homeless issue, including responsibility for the $92 million debacle known as the CARES Campus homeless facility.

How has Thomas handled this important assignment?

• Washoe’s vagrant-by-choice population has increased well over 2,000% since Thomas took charge in 2017. At less than 1% of the County’s population, the homeless commit over 20% of all crimes. Thomas has sat by and said nothing publicly, while these numbers and results have been under-reported and unreported by both her subordinates and the County Manager.

This is largely because CARES was built to care almost exclusively for Washoe County’s indigent. However, a majority of CARES’ clientele is now from all over the US. This is due to CARES’ reputation as a weakly managed, violently out of control program, rife with crime and drugs, with few-if-any rules or responsibilities for its clients. The ultimate responsibility for allowing this situation to exist lies squarely with Thomas.

Four years, thousands of clients, and $92 million dollars later, the CARES program that has been Kate Thomas’ responsibility, cannot produce ONE success story, a claim that has been attested to by a leading spokesperson for CARES. In this context, “success” being defined as an adult individual who has a full-time, unsubsidized job, is clean and sober, and lives in an unsubsidized home or apartment of their own with no food stamps or subsidized phone.

Notwithstanding the CARES Campus’ total failure, in a recent Nevada Globe/Education Crusade, interview, Thomas stated that she thought the CARES program was “doing a GREAT job!”

https://thenevadaglobe.com/articles/opinion-3-top-county-admins-for-cares-campus-2-personal-meetings-1-conclusion-incompetent-overpaid-need-to-go/

With almost no past history of budget deficits prior to Thomas’ hiring in 2017, Washoe has increasingly been in-the-red during her tenure and is projecting its largest ever budget deficit of $27 million for fiscal year 2026.

Admittedly, budgets have not been Thomas’ primary responsibility. However, as the #2 County employee, I can’t recall one time during these deficit years when Thomas has publicly and courageously suggested that the County itself needs to change its irresponsible fiscal ways, including heavily trimming its bloated payroll and overpaid employees.

It should also be noted that neighboring Douglas County is projecting a healthy budget surplus for 2026.  Did the Washoe County Commissioners consider interviewing Douglas’ Assistant County Manager for Washoe’s job opening? Douglas’ Assistant Manager is paid $50,000-to-$100,000 per-year less than Thomas has earned in the same role in Washoe County.

County Manager candidate Kate Thomas is a personable, friendly, eager-to-please person. Unfortunately, those qualities alone do not justify the approximately $2 million dollars or more in total compensation that Washoe County taxpayers have paid her over the past 8 years.

County taxpayers have not come close to getting their money’s worth. The County Commissioners need to publicly acknowledge this by re-opening their job search for a County Manager who has a proven ability – in a situation comparable to Washoe County’s,  to right the County’s sinking ship, and it IS sinking.

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