Public safety cuts are necessary

By Dow Constantine

How would cutting 100 Sheriff's deputies affect police response times? How would a reduction of 30 deputy prosecutors impact our ability to put criminal suspects on trial?

These are examples of the grim decisions facing King County citizens and lawmakers as we confront a $68 million budget deficit for 2009 and a possible $80 million deficit in 2010.

How did this problem come to be? The short answer is that the cost of maintaining the same core services from year to year increases faster than the resources available to pay for them.

While recent state initiatives have limited the growth of King County's core revenues, costs have continued to grow. For example, Tim Eyman's 2001 state Initiative 747 limited the increase in general fund property tax collections for municipalities such as King County to 1 percent annually. The prior limit had been 6 percent, although King County's increases had been much less than that in the years preceding the initiative. (I-747 was invalidated by the State Supreme Court last year but immediately re-enacted by the Legislature.)

Eyman's initiative did not limit staggering increases in the price of gasoline and diesel. It did not limit the annual double-digit increases in the cost of health insurance for county employees. It merely limited the ability to pay for these things.

A reasonable person might ask why reductions of $148 million over two years couldn't be taken against a $5 billion budget without harming essential services. The problem is that the cuts must all come from the county's $662 million annual general fund, the money over which we theoretically have the broadest discretion. The balance of the total budget is in dedicated funds collected under federal-, state- or voter-imposed legal limitations for such functions as transit, sewage treatment, parks, mental health, Medic One, and 911 service, to name just a few.

The general fund is comprised of the money the county receives as its share of general property taxes and sales taxes. The vast majority of tax-paying businesses have been annexed into one or another of King County's 39 cities, and the county receives a small share of 15 percent of cities' sales taxes to help continue to pay for regional services. State law allows only cities - not counties - to levy utility taxes or business and occupation taxes. These "discretionary" general funds pay for general government services, including King County's major state-mandated - and not at all discretionary - function: public safety. We run adult and juvenile jails, District and Superior Courts, the Sheriff's Office, and the Prosecutor's Office. We also fund public defense.

Combined, these law, safety, and justice functions make up more than 70 percent of this year's $662 million general fund budget. Had we not undertaken innovative measures a few years ago to divert people from lives of crime, criminal justice increases would have consumed the entire general fund. Still, making major cuts in the King County budget necessarily means cutting public safety expenditures.

King County is no stranger to general fund cuts. In my first three years on the County Council, I served on the budget leadership team as we cut $137 million from the general fund budget. Those cuts were very tough. The next round will be both painful and, ultimately, counter-productive.

King County is not alone. Most Washington counties are in a pinch. We all need help to finally solve the "structural gap" between costs and resources. We need the federal government to reform our health care system, to slow the shocking rate of cost increases. We need state government to reform its own tax system and improve the mix of taxes counties can assess, so that the burden of providing adequate services is fairly shared by all. We need both the state and federal governments to reverse the pattern of eliminating funding for essential services and creating unfunded mandates that must be picked up at the local level.

Further, we need to constantly create new efficiencies, to push forward with the countywide performance measurement programs of which I have been a lead advocate. Our comprehensive performance management system will identify where costs can be cut, reward employee innovation, and allow budget decisions based on solid data about what works and what doesn't. And finally, we must continue the process of annexing urban unincorporated areas into cities, which are better able to afford the costs of providing local services.

Public safety reductions are no answer. Cutting services on which we all rely is not "efficiency", but a prescription for much higher long-term costs and lower quality of life. We need cooperation between all levels of government, the reform of antiquated tax and health care systems, and a complete commitment to efficiency measures, to tackle the challenge of providing quality services for all 1.9 million of us who call King County home.

Dow Constantine is a member of the operating budget committee on the Metropolitan King County Council and may be reached at 296.1008 or dow.constantine@kingcounty.gov