King County executive candidate Fred Jarrett is sending a “back-to-the-basics” message in his campaign.

Jarrett, a Republican-turned-Democratic state senator from Mercer Island, wants better efficiency and accountability with regards to county services, especially in budget-strapped times.

“The budget crisis requires an approach that recognizes that all county employees and residents have an equal stake in the resolution of this crisis, which poses the specter of drastic cuts in critical services and county job losses,” said Jarrett, who visited Auburn last week on his campaign trail. “We need to come together in a partnership to fix this crisis.

“The difference in potential budget savings between the existing proposal and one requiring all county employees to participate could be as much as $8 million – a substantial portion of King County’s budget shortfall,” he said.

Jarrett recently released a plan for putting the county’s financial house in order, declaring he would put the new ferry district on hold while focusing attention on Metro’s “more productive” bus routes, which could benefit communities like Auburn.

“Buses need to go where they work and they need to go where we want them to work,” he said.

Jarrett outlined a seven-step strategy to embrace change, avert financial disaster and restore responsibility in the county budget.

One of these measures calls for stopping any new county program until the existing budget crisis is resolves. He wants to establish and enforce accountability and performance standards focused on customer service for every county manager and department.

He also wants to reduce bloated overhead, insisting there are more middle managers than needed and too many employees earning more than $100,000 a year. And he said he would benchmark employee salaries and benefits to those of other public and private employers.

Jarrett also wants to bring all sides together to get the cost of employee health care under control.

“For too long the county has operated as an opaque bureaucracy with little accountability to citizens. Decisions have been made over the years that have created a financial bow-wave that now threatens the financial solvency of the county government,” Jarrett said.

The state primary is Aug. 18.