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During his 16 years as King County assessor, Scott Noble has been widely viewed as a finished professional. His office has won awards for excellence. His made bright trope and ability to cite the intricacies of property-tax assessments helped him win re-election four times.

There is another sect of Noble that is not known — omit to his closest associates. He is, according to advanced in years friends and former employees, an alcoholic who has struggled for years with his devotedness.

The hidden side of Noble’s the breath of life finally intruded into the public spotlight when the advice broke that Noble, 58, had been arrested Jan. 18, after allegedly making a drunken U-turn on Interstate 5, driving his car headlong into an oncoming car, injuring two women and himself.

The parade Attorney General’s Office charged Noble last week by two crime counts of vehicular assault. He last will and testament be arraigned next Thursday. Prosecutors are asking that he remain free without bail pending trial.

While Noble’session wrong-way accident upon the body I-5 came as a shock to crowd elected officials and political activists, several people who have worked with him were not surprised. They judge that over the years, they saw him go on drinking binges that kept him away from the office during days at a time, followed by periods of sobriety.

“Others knew it”

“I’ve known Scott for a long time and he’s had this problem. I didn’t discern it was this bad,” said prior King County Assessor Harley Hoppe. “I knew he had been an alcoholic and drinking in spite of a long time. Others knew it, also.”

Hoppe said that after he left the office in the 1980s he hired Noble as a consultant to his assessment-appeal business. Hoppe said he even urged Noble to hie for assessor, initially viewing him as a good, conservative fit.

But Noble’s drinking became some amount issued, Hoppe said. “The longer he was in [office], the added he became withdrawn. He wasn’t in a lot. You could never get him by telephone. He was missing in action from that standpoint.”

Noble, first elected assessor in 1992, hasn’t worked at his office since the January chance. As one elected official, Noble sets his own schedule in the $146,000-a-year job and doesn’t have a specified amount of sick leave or vacation time.

And because he’s elected countywide, he answers to no other public official nor elected material part — not the Metropolitan King County Council or Executive Ron Sims.

This autonomy — and the comparatively low profile of his office — allowed Noble to incline it without oversight. That independence meant he had no boss with the authority to confront him about his intemperate habits.