Minimal impact from Sheriff’s budget cuts
June 24, 2008
By Emily Keller
If King County officials respond to the county’s budget crisis by reducing criminal justice funding, some of the impacts could trickle down to Sammamish.
Facing a $68 million shortfall in the 2009 budget, King County Executive Ron Sims has proposed an 8.6 percent cut to criminal justice services, which make up 71 percent of the county’s budget.
Those services include the county sheriff’s office, prosecuting attorney’s office, superior and district courts and Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention.
That would mean discontinued or reduced services within the county, possibly eliminating investigation of some property crimes, most frauds, internet crimes and bad check cases, and would lead to centralized domestic violence investigations, according to a memo from County Sheriff Sue Rahr. Unincorporated areas would face the greatest impacts.
“It will affect Klahanie a lot,” said Sammamish Administrative Sgt. R.L. Baxter. “It won’t affect Sammamish but it will affect the county around Sammamish.”
While day-to-day police services in Sammamish would not be reduced by the cuts since the city contracts for its police services, there could be secondary impacts.
The city’s backup services could be reduced, leaving Sammamish to rely on Redmond or Issaquah for help.
The city could also end up paying more money for services in the Issaquah court system.
If the proposed cuts are made, King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg may raise his standards, re-classifying some felony charges as misdemeanors and pushing more cases down to local courts.
According to a report by Rahr, Satterberg and two county judges, called “Public Safety in Peril,” the proposed cut would reduce funding to the prosecuting attorney’s office by $3.7 million, making it no longer viable to file theft of property crime cases for values between $1,000 and $10,000 at the county level.
The prosecutor would refer those cases, forgery cases, and drug possession cases for offenders with minimal criminal histories to lower courts.
Samm-amish cases tried in Issaquah that result in guilty verdicts would require the city to pay for incarceration at the Issaquah City Jail or Yakima County Jail instead of the county.
These cuts, however, should not reduce the number of police on the streets of Sammamish.
“No changes in the sheriff’s office will result in any reduction in the city unless Sammamish changes its contracting model,” said Chief of Police Brad Thompson, adding that response times will not change even if the county reduces the number of its deputies.
Rahr said the proposed cuts to the sheriff’s office are the equivalent of losing 75 deputies and staff.
However, Sammamish would not lose any deputies if that were to occur since the city contracts for its police services.
“We’re all kind of collectively holding our breath,” Thompson said about the possible impacts.
Carolyn Duncan, communications director for the King County Executive’s Office, attributed the revenue shortfall to the incorporation of areas with high sales tax revenues that once went to the county, and to Initiative 747, a law that limits the property tax increase to one percent annually regardless of inflation.
“Residential unincorporated [King County] is our tax base and it’s just not keeping up with inflation,” said Duncan.
Duncan said the county is hoping for a statewide solution and has been working with state officials to find one, but in the meantime the county must pass a balanced budget. “It’s a very, very bad situation to have to look at cuts to criminal justice,” she said.
County departments are scheduled to submit their budget proposals in July, as the King County Council submits its budget priorities.
Sims will meet with the agencies in August and present his proposed budget to the Council in October, which is to be followed by four public hearings.
The Council Budget Committee examines and amends the proposed budget in November and then prepares final budget, which the Council is scheduled to adopt in late November.
To read about the budget visit: http://www.kingcounty.gov/council/budget.aspx.
Reporter Emily Keller can be reached at 392-6434, ext. 242, or ekeller@isspress.com.
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