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King County Executive Kurt Triplett said he’ll be proposing a $50 million sales tax increase measure that would go before voters in November.
The move, outlined during an interview Thursday morning on KUOW’s Weekday, would give voters the choice of whether they want to raise taxes in order to stave off – at least temporarily – serious cuts in human services, law enforcement and public health.
Because of the timing of the county’s budget process, Triplett said he won’t know when he’s required to submit a budget to the County Council on Sept. 28 whether voters will approve the one-tenth-of-one-percent tax increase in November.
So he said he’ll propose a budget that assumes the measure – which would provide $10 million each for public health, human services and law enforcement -- does not pass. The result will mean ugly cuts in those and other areas. The other $20 million raised by the increase would go to cities.
He said the cuts he’ll propose could involve closing all 39 local parks in unincorporated King County, health clinics, and animal control – on top of law enforcement and other human services cuts.
“That’s why I believe we have an obligation to say is this the county you want in this great recession? You might choose to create a safety net,” Triplett said on air.
The move also puts the candidates for King County executive on the hook.
Last week, County Councilwoman Julia Patterson proposed her own tax increase aimed at sparing human services and public health funding.
Thus far, most candidates – state legislators Ross Hunter and Fred Jarrett, and County Councilman Larry Phillips – have said they do not support a tax raise in this economy. Only former television reporter Susan Hutchison has said she would back the human services tax.
However, none has released a detailed plan for making cuts without a tax hike. Instead, candidates like Hunter, Jarrett and Hutchison have painted the county as bloated with middle managers and said they’d tackle the budget problem by making the county run more efficiently.
Phillips and Dow Constantine, a fellow County Councilman and rival in the race for county executive, have said they are withholding comment until the budget is proposed, though Phillips has also made proposals designed to stimulate the economy and thus bring in more tax revenue.
The problem, said Triplett, who is not running for office, is that he’ll also be proposing $17 million in cuts targeting county administration.
The county faces a $50 million budget hole next year, so regardless of whether the measure passes, about $20 million in additional cuts would be necessary.
Even if the measure passes, Triplett said he'll propose about $10 million in cuts in county employee costs through reductions in cost of living increases, additional furloughs, or possibly layoffs. He hasn’t decided which yet, but noted that 10 additional furlough days would represent a 2 percent pay cut. The rest of the cuts would come from closing neighborhood parks in unincorporated King County and reducing funding for clinics and animal control.
The problem for the candidates is that Triplett will have already made the cuts to make the county leaner. So if they do not support a tax increase, additional cuts in core services would be necessary.
In addition to having to account for what they’d cut without a tax increase, Tripett said candidates should be asked is what they’d do next year when the next executive will have to shave another $60 million from the 2011 budget.
“And all the things they are highlighting (on the campaign trail) are things that I would have done (already),” he said.
Hunter and Jarrett have both proposed finding savings through either eliminating the West Seattle water taxi and plans for other ferry lines, either entirely, or cutting expansion in service.
Triplett is not proposing those cuts.
Candidates like Jarrett have taken aim at the number of county employees who make over $100,000 a year in salary.
While layofffs are possible, Triplett spokeswoman Carolyn Duncan said he won't be targeting a specific salary figure. And on the air, Triplett argued there would be tradeoffs in cutting managers.
Triplett said 750 people make that much out of a total county government workforce of 16,000. He noted that the county in 2001 consolidated 13 departments into seven, eliminating managers. The budget cuts he’s proposing will already eliminate “the last remnant of folks” who could be reasonably cut, he said.
About 200 of those making over $100,000, he said, are prosecutors and judges.
He said, “who's a middle manager? We’ve created a caricature … A middle manager is the person who runs the Regional Justice Center. And you’re going to hold us accountable if someone escapes or hangs themselves.”
Other middle managers run the Elections Department, he said. Or they are in charge of creating an evacuation plan for possible flooding of the Green River.
“You don’t want a 20 year old running emergency services,” he said.
