Sims trims budget add-ons

King County Executive Ron Sims on Friday vetoed $3.7 million in spending the County Council had added to his end-of-the-year budget.

Sims said the council add-ons — mostly to support nonprofit organizations — represented "a breach of our fiscal policy and sets a dangerous precedent."

The added spending would have drawn down the county's budget reserves unless year-end revenues proved higher than expected or expenditures came in below projections, said Budget Director Bob Cowan.

County Council's budget chairman, Larry Gossett, said Friday afternoon he hadn't talked with other council members about the veto and doesn't know if there would be support for an override.

Gossett, like Sims a Seattle Democrat, defended the council's unanimous vote Dec. 5 to spend more than the roughly $12 million the executive proposed in a fourth-quarter supplemental budget ordinance.

The "supplemental" was adopted after the council approved a 2006 general-fund budget of more than $500 million.

Gossett said it's "hogwash" for Sims to suggest the added spending would lower county reserves below acceptable levels.

"I don't understand what he's talking about," Gossett said. "Over the last couple years we've made sure that all our reserve funds are healthier than they've ever been."

In addition to cutting out funding added by the council, Sims' veto eliminated $150,000 he had originally proposed for the Senior Center of West Seattle. He vetoed that funding in order to veto council add-ons in the same section of the ordinance.

The senior center's executive director, Karen Sisson, said she was shocked to learn Friday her agency won't receive money it had been promised to help pay for a building project that is under way.

The council added $750,000 for the Urban League's planned African American Museum in Seattle's former Colman School, $500,000 for construction of Seattle Opera's McCaw Hall at Seattle Center, $500,000 for Village Theatre in Issaquah and $205,000 for Bellevue-based Youth Eastside Services.

Sims said the council's spending would leave the county less prepared to deal with a possible increase in fuel prices or with a possible avian-flu epidemic. If a deadly flu outbreak hits, he said, "We could blow right through that entire reserve."

The council's spending plan, Sims said, was a departure from the fiscal "discipline" the council had shown during four years of budgetary belt-tightening that won the county top bond ratings.

Budget director Cowan said the senior-center money could be restored early next year, and, if financial conditions improve, so could some of the council add-ons.

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com