The King County Council, over the next six weeks, will prepare a budget for 2010. Similar to last year, we are facing the situation so many families in tough economic times experience – our revenues don’t cover our expenses.
King County’s general fund faces a $56 million shortfall for 2010, largely due to the recent, double-digit drop in sales tax and decrease in property-tax revenues. These reductions are significant because together, property and sales tax comprise 96 percent of the money coming into the general fund.
This budget shortfall is not just a King County phenomenon. A major drop in tax revenues caused by the recession has created a structural crisis that is reducing King County’s ability to provide services, other than those mandated by law.
Programs that are mandated are: jails, district (misdemeanor) court, superior (felony) court, public defense, sheriff services, elections, medical examiner, and assessor functions. Programs within public health and most human services are considered “discretionary” because King County does not have a federal or state mandate to fund and provide them.
Human services are defined as those services which are designed to help the most marginalized members of our society. Examples are drug-and-alcohol treatment, senior services and domestic-violence shelters. These services were eliminated from the executive’s proposed 2010 budget. While not mandatory, many human services have a direct impact on lowering the cost of criminal-justice programs. Criminal-justice agencies represent 76 percent of the general fund, so programs that reduce their costs have a profound effect on our ability to balance our revenues and expenditures.
I am troubled by many of the proposed cuts to human services, and I’d like to highlight two in particular.
First, King County funds regional domestic-violence services and shelters. Without them, preventable assaults and murders occur. In fact, domestic violence is the leading cause of women’s visits to the emergency room. In addition to physical injury, domestic violence often causes lasting damage to family stability – half of women with children who are living on the streets or in their cars are there because they are fleeing an abusive partner. Funding shelters and services to victims of domestic violence prevents unnecessary hospital costs and jail costs. Unfortunately, these services face an 80 percent cut in the executive’s proposed budget.
Second, King County funds programs for youth at risk of being involved in the criminal justice system. For example, the Safe Communities program provides tutoring and counseling that cost an average of $2 per day per kid, instead of the $450 per day cost of locking them in juvenile detention. Safe Communities has a 91 percent success rate in keeping the kids they serve out of juvenile detention, but is 100 percent cut from the executive’s proposed budget.
Since 2000, when programs were implemented that keep people out of jail, and provide them with treatment, there has been a 40 percent reduction in jail bookings, 30 percent reduction in felony case filings, and a 30 percent decline in the jail population. These figures all represent significant savings for criminal justice, made possible with the support of human-services programs.
As we have learned in our efforts to keep the jail population down, jail is the most costly place to keep people who are suffering from addiction and mental illness. People don’t get better in jail and they don’t change their behavior when they return to the streets. Therefore, the human services that help prevent people from going to jail reduce court and jail costs, and are as fiscally responsible in long run as they are morally imperative. They prevent death, injury, and long-term financial instability. Human services help King County provide relief for thousands of families, change lives, and result in savings to our government budgets.
As the County Council works to finish the budget before Thanksgiving, I want you to know that I will be supporting these human services that contribute to cost-savings for King County, while preventing human suffering. It is times like these when we can’t afford to leave those most vulnerable behind.
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