King County Exec, Sheriff Butt Heads over Budget Woes
King County Exec. Ron Sims is cutting everyone's budget to try to cover the $93 million dollar county deficit, and it's starting to get ugly. This morning's showdown is between Sims and King County Sheriff Sue Rahr, who says that the budget cuts will mean her office is forced to--among other discontinuations--stop investigating property crimes under $10,000 (most car theft, for example). Dozens of troopers currently assigned to unincorporated King County will have to be contracted to specific cities, Sound Transit, and Metro, leaving already-isolated residents without needed patrol.
Needless to say, the Sheriff's upset, and Sims' aids are calling her reaction overly dramatic. But is Rahr really making too much of a fuss? She laid out the numbers in early November at a panel in White Center: the King County Sheriff's budget will be cut by 11.4%, affecting the 250,000-strong population of unincorporated King County disproportionately compared to the 1.8 million total county population. At the same panel, Judge Bruce Hilyer spoke in support of Rahr's concerns, saying, "What distinguishes our county is access to justice. This (plan) sets a terrible precedent."
More on the KSCO's cuts, Sims' spin, and unincorporated King County after the jump.
On the department's website, there's a plea for help--"Public Safety in Peril"--with specific areas where the Office foresees impacts on the county's residents. The cuts will keep coming until 2012, says Sims. Here's an online version of the informative flyer [pdf] available through the KCSO with more information about how many jobs from each county department will be cut or contracted out, and a look at the county's budget as a whole. Here's the King County Executive spin on the 2009 budget, which emphasizes how tough the cuts were to make and congratulates both unions and county employees for their willingness to make sacrifices.
Those are the numbers. We do not blame Sheriff Rahr one bit for doing as much as she can to secure more funding for the KSCO, but it does look like there's not a lot--if any--money in the system to allocate. Our increasing frustration is with how much of the budget cuts have a disproportionately large impact on the poorer parts of King County; parts of Highline, Renton, and Federal Way are all still unincorporated, for instance. We're not sure what the answer is, but we suspect it will have a lot to do with creative, supportive community involvement and a host of regularly scheduled, badly needed miracles.
Interested about which parts of King County are still unincorporated? Check out this map and click on any of the ten highlighted areas for more information.
