King County Councilmember Larry Phillips won’t seek reelection, will retire at year’s end

King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Lar­ry Phillips, long a fix­ture on the state’s largest coun­ty’s leg­isla­tive body, announced today he has decid­ed not to run again in Novem­ber and will retire at the end of the year, when his cur­rent term expires.

“It has been an hon­or and a priv­i­lege to serve the peo­ple of King Coun­ty and the region, rep­re­sent­ing the Fourth Dis­trict on the King Coun­ty Coun­cil,” Phillips said in a state­ment post­ed to his web­site. “It has been inspir­ing to be con­sis­tent­ly immersed in the deci­sion mak­ing of our region in meet­ing the many challenges—and changes—of the past two decades.”

“But now it is time to set a new course; con­se­quent­ly I do not intend to seek re-elec­tion this fall to the King Coun­ty Council.”

“This deci­sion is not reached eas­i­ly. While I still pos­sess the ener­gy and desire to help our region meet the many chal­lenges growth pos­es to our qual­i­ty of life, and remain com­mit­ted to pre­serv­ing the val­ues we hold close in this unique and beau­ti­ful home we share, I hope to do so in new ways.”

Phillips has served many times as coun­cil chair, and is a tire­less advo­cate for strength­en­ing our tran­sit sys­tem and pro­tect­ing our environment.

Phillips’ deci­sion to retire will almost sure­ly set off a big scram­ble for his seat, pos­si­bly includ­ing sev­er­al state leg­is­la­tors (who won’t have to risk their own seats to run for Phillips’ seat) and maybe even a cur­rent city coun­cilmem­ber or two.

The 4th Coun­ty Coun­cil Dis­trict is sit­u­at­ed in north Seat­tle and takes in a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of neighborhoods.

As we get reac­tion to the news of Phillips’ retire­ment, we’ll update this post.