Sims wants pay freeze to balance King County budget

King County Executive Ron Sims told nonunion employees Tuesday he plans to freeze their pay and reduce their cost-of-living adjustments, and he asked union workers for similar concessions in order to balance next year's budget.

Sims, who will present his proposed 2009 budget to the Metropolitan King County Council on Monday, said he had fallen $15 million short of finding $90 million in program cuts to balance the general fund.

In an e-mail to about 15,000 employees, Sims said he has been unable to reach his original target for program cuts "without drastically compromising King County's first-rate criminal-justice system or dismantling King County's public-health and human-services safety net."

Instead, he is asking employees to bear part of the burden in their paychecks: $5 million from nonunion workers and $10 million from union workers.

Union and nonunion employees both receive automatic cost-of-living increases of 2 to 6 percent, depending on inflation. Sims wants to reduce the expected increase of 5 to 6 percent to 3 percent.

Sims wrote that he has had "positive preliminary discussions" with unions and will base his proposed budget on the assumption that they will agree to his request for concessions. He cannot impose those changes without unions' approval.

Doug Justus, president of the King County Corrections Guild, said the union's executive committee will discuss its response at a meeting tonight. But the county's 522 jail guards may not be able to help out much, he said, because they haven't had a pay raise or cost-of-living increase since 2006, when their contract expired. The contract dispute is in arbitration.

Justus said jail guards are being forced to work large amounts of overtime because pay isn't adequate to draw new recruits. If guards are forced to take any pay cuts, he said, "It's going to cause our buildings [the jails] to be unsafe and unsecure. We do not want to see that."

County Council Budget Chairman Larry Phillips said it was "very troubling" that Sims asked unions for wage concessions just 10 days before the deadline for him to submit a balanced budget to the council. "On the 11th hour, 59th minute, he's basically saying, 'I can't get it done.' "

The council's four-member budget-review committee on Sept. 30 sent Sims a "twelve-step program" that recommended immediate spending cuts ranging from reducing overtime shifts to laying off all nonessential temporary employees.

Phillips, who signed the twelve-step letter with Bob Ferguson, Jane Hague and Kathy Lambert, said Sims has not responded to it. Phillips is considering running against Sims, a fellow Democrat, for county executive next year.

Sims said in his message to employees that $54 million of the general-fund budget gap "is directly or indirectly attributable to the financial crisis gripping the nation."

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