Commissioner Tye Menser, District 3
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Term of Office
Tye is serving his second term in office. His current term expires in 2026.
About Tye:
Tye has lived in Thurston County for nearly two decades with his wife, a kindergarten teacher, and two children.
In 1993, Tye graduated with honors from Harvard College, with a degree in Government. In 1997, he graduated from law school at the University of California at Berkeley. During his time in law school, Tye taught himself Spanish, spent a summer studying language in Morelia, Mexico, and spent one semester studying law, in Spanish, at the University of Chile in Santiago.
In September 1997 Tye began a 21-year legal career that included commercial and intellectual property litigation, criminal defense, and family law. Tye has been admitted to the state bar associations of Illinois, California, Alaska, and Washington. During the early part of his career, he spent 7 years in northern Alaska with the Alaska Public Defender Agency — half of that representing Native Alaskans in the remote Arctic village of Kotzebue — providing legal services to indigent clients who could not otherwise afford an attorney.
In 2007, Tye joined the law firm of Morgan Hill, P.C., as an associate attorney. Over the last decade, however, he continued to provide legal services to indigent citizens through Thurston County Public Defense. Between 2010 and 2013, Tye served as a Commissioner on Thurston County’s Water Conservancy Board.
Tye has also been actively involved in the local music and arts community by playing the banjo in a traditional bluegrass band, The Oly Mountain Boys, since 2008.
In 2024, Tye serves as the Chair of the Board of County Commissioners.
Tye represents Thurston County on the following regional Boards and Committees:
- Alliance For a Healthy South Sound
- DES Community Officials Roundtable
- Elections Canvassing Board
- Finance Committee
- LOTT
- Mayor's Forum
- Olympia Sea Level Rise Response Collaborative
- Puget Sound Partnership Salmon Recovery Council, South Sound Watersheds Representative
- Washington State Association of Counties (WSAC) Timber Counties Caucus
- WSAC Coastal Counties Caucus
- WA Office of Public Defense Advisory Committee, WSAC representative
- WA State Building Code Council, Western Counties representative
- WA Sentencing Guidelines Commission, WSAC representative