Outside Pacific County, it wasn’t big news that departing three-term Gov. Jay Inslee wants a new youth correctional facility on the grounds of a Grays Harbor County prison.

Here, it was a slap in the face.

Having pushed through closure of Naselle Youth Camp just year before last, Inslee’s flip-flop is an example why he and other Democratic statewide office seekers are losing ground in rural Washington. Inslee defeated well-regarded former state Attorney General Rob McKenna by 359 votes in Pacific County in 2012, but then went on to lose to Bill Bryant by 115 votes in 2016, before being blown out of the water by 949 votes in 2020 by kooky Loren Culp. This is a downward trajectory that will be hard for Democrats to turn around. Inslee’s successor, current state AG Bob Furguson, lost the county to former U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert by 676 votes.

Pacific County accounts for a tiny fraction of statewide ballots. A Democratic gubernatorial candidate could lose by 100% here and yet easily win the race. Nearly the same political irrelevance attaches to Washington’s rural counties as a whole. The final outcome of statewide contests normally depends only on winning the core urban counties around Puget Sound.

Closing Naselle Youth Camp was a long-term project for the Washington Department of Children, Youth and Families. Most visibly beginning in the administration of Gov. Christine Gregoire, Naselle was a persistent irritant to Olympia-based bureaucrats. They found it geographically inconvenient. They believed its model — outdoor-oriented education far removed from bad influences — was outmoded. They convinced governors and, eventually, enough legislators that urban youth crime was on an irreversible path to improvement. Youths requiring state intervention would be better off staying close to their homes, families and friends, or so DCYF’s story went.

Now we read that since last year Washington’s juvenile justice population has increased 60%, according to Inslee’s office. Most of that is due to a rise in crime among young people that Inslee said was “unpredicted and unpredictable.” Green Hill School, into which some Naselle youths were jammed in 2022, now is grossly overcrowded. Dozens of youths have been transferred into adult prisons.

What a travesty: Troubled young lives further damaged, the Naselle facility’s proud tradition of youth education destroyed, and nearly a hundred jobs killed in a county that could ill afford their loss.

Along with other tone-deaf dictates including spuriously rejecting science in order to disallow burrowing shrimp control in Willapa Bay and the regulatory death penalty for a $2 billion methanol plant in Kalama, the Naselle closure revealed a lamentable lack of understanding in Olympia of the fragility of rural economics and culture.

Killing Naselle Youth Camp and ignoring its enormous importance to troubled youths and Pacific County residents was bad enough — though hardly a surprise considering how long it had been targeted. But it’s insulting to have Inslee and DCYF turn around two years later and act like it’s a huge surprise that youth crime hasn’t vanished. In reality, many said in 2022 that youth crime statistics were manipulated, in part, to justify the Naselle closure.

Going by reporting by Washington State Standard, restoring youth services in Naselle isn’t contemplated. The unfortunate reality is that it might be hard to rebuild the qualified staffing and other local resources that existed before the closure — but it’s worth considering.

Governor-elect Furguson shows signs of understanding Olympia’s obligation to make state government work for all Washingtonians. If unwinding the mistake by Inslee and DCYF isn’t feasible, he and the Legislature should at a minimum begin making good in Pacific County by providing possession and ongoing funding for the expensive, mothballed Naselle facility to serve useful functions outlined by the Chinook Indian Nation. Furguson should also reexamine burrowing-shrimp control and advance other priorities we’ve long identified, such as redesigning the dangerous stretch of U.S. Highway 101 between Raymond and Cosmopolis.

Turning the page on Inslee’s 12 years is a fine opportunity to reset Olympia’s contract with rural Washington. We live in a great state that is at its best when it works for everyone.