Ron Sims is a civic volunteer active in health, education, environmental and social equity issues. Appointed by Governor Jay Inslee, Sims serves as the chair of the Washington Health Benefit Exchange Board. The board is responsible for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in Washington State.
Sims is on the Board of Regents of Washington State University. He was appointed to the board by former Governor Chris Gregoire. The Board of Regents is the university’s governing body.
Sims is on the Board of Directors of the Washington Health Alliance, formerly the Puget Sound Health Alliance, a nonprofit organization he helped found where employers, physicians, hospitals, patients, health plan providers and others from throughout the region come together to improve health care quality.
Sims served as the Deputy Secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development from 2009 to 2011. He was appointed by President Obama and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. As the second most senior official at HUD, Sims managed the day-to-day operations of an agency with 8,500 employees and an operating budget of nearly $40 billion.
Prior to his appointment at HUD, Sims served for 12 years as the elected Executive of Martin Luther King, Jr. County in Washington State, the 13th largest county in the nation with 1.8 million residents and 39 cities including the cities of Seattle, Bellevue and Redmond.
As County Executive, Sims was nationally recognized for his work on the integration of environmental, social equity and public health policies that produced groundbreaking work on climate change, health care reform, affordable housing, mass transit, environmental protection, land use, and equity and social justice.
Born in Spokane, Washington in 1948, Sims is a graduate of Central Washington University.
Sims was born in Spokane, Washington, to Reverend James C. Sims Sr. and Lydia T. Sims. He graduated from Lewis and Clark High School and attended Central Washington University in Ellensburg, where he earned a B.A. in psychology. Between graduation and his election to the King County Council he worked in the office of the Washington State Attorney General, for the Federal Trade Commission, for the juvenile offenders program of the city of Seattle, and as an aide in the state senate. He is an ordained Baptist minister.
In 1985, Sims was elected to the King County Council, being reelected in 1989 and 1993. During his first term, he and fellow Councilman Bruce Laing successfully led a campaign to have the county rededicate its name in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.,[3] a change not officially recognized by Washington state until July 25, 2005).[4]
In 1994, he was defeated by Republican incumbent Slade Gorton in an election for the United States Senate.
In 1996, he was appointed King County Executive after the previous holder of the office, Gary Locke, was elected governor of Washington. He was re-elected in 1997, 2001 and 2005.[citation needed]
On July 29, 2003, he announced that he would seek the Democratic nomination for Washington state governor in the 2004 elections. Sims made news in the campaign when he proposed replacing the state sales tax and business and occupation tax with a progressively graduated income tax. In the primary election held on September 14, 2004, Sims lost to state Attorney General Christine Gregoire.
On February 2, 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Sims to become Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, being confirmed by the United States Senate on May 6, 2009 and sworn in on May 8, 2009 [5]
On May 8, 2009, Ronald Cordell Sims became the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Sims now second-in-command of the federal agency will oversee day-to-day operations of the Department which has an annual budget of $39 billion and some 8,500 employees. A long time champion of environmental stewardship and mass transit, he will now confront the national foreclosure crisis among other housing issues.
Ronald C. Sims, a twin, was born on July 5, 1948, in Spokane, Washington, to James M. Sims and Lydia T. Ramsey Sims. During World War II his parents had moved from Newark, New Jersey, to Spokane’s Geiger Air Field, where his father served in Army Air Force.
After graduating from Lewis and Clark High School in 1966, Sims attended Central Washington State College (now Central Washington University). While in college he became politically engaged as a columnist for the student newspaper. He wrote articles that challenged many of the policies of school officials. His activism contributed to his election as vice president of the student body in his junior year, and in his final year of college, the student body president.
Sims graduated from college in 1971 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and then moved to Seattle. He held a series of local, state, and federal government positions. His first position was as an investigator with the consumer-protection division of the Washington State Attorney’s office. Later he held a similar post with the Federal Trade Commission. In 1979 he became the manager of youth services for the City of Seattle’s Department of Human Resources. Sims later became the director of the South East Effective Development (SEED), a community based organization that advocated economic development and social justice in southeast Seattle.
Ron Sims began his political career in 1985 when he became the first African American elected to the King County Council. While on the Council, Sims promoted civil rights issues including lobbying for the renaming of King County in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Sims also promoted computerizing the police fingerprint identification system, building a transit tunnel through downtown Seattle, and improving intergovernmental collaboration. Sims’s political success contributed to his reelection election to a second term on the Council in 1989. He ran unopposed in 1993 for his final third term. One year later Sims won the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate but was defeated by Republican incumbent Slade Gorton.
After King County Executive Gary Locke won the governorship, Sims was appointed to Locke’s vacant position in November 1996. Sims then ran for County Executive the following year, beating Republican Suzette Cooke. He was reelected in 2001 and 2005. During Sims’s tenure, King County government improved mass transit and water quality, and addressed environmental issues. In 2004 Sims was defeated by Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire for the Democratic nomination for Governor. Gregoire went on to narrowly win the governorship over Republican Dino Rossi.
In recent years, under Sims’s leadership, King County has promoted AIDS awareness and other public health issues. Sims, an ordained Baptist minister, has continued his community involvement as a member of “Night Watch,” a ministry dedicated to helping the homeless. Sims and his wife, Cayan Topacio, have three sons.
