Metropolitan King County Council rescinds plan to trim jail funding

Metropolitan King County Council members tentatively decided to reduce jail funding by more than $1 million in order to save programs for mentally ill and drug-addicted offenders — but rescinded the decision amid protests from the county executive and a combative labor union.

The King County Corrections Guild, which represents corrections officers in the jail, told council members their now-suspended approach could endanger public safety by releasing "dangerous, violent offenders" into programs outside jail.

"Our mantra has always been safety first, and we do not want political entities to come forward and give King County voters a false sense that everything is OK when it's not," guild President Doug Justus said Thursday.

The guild's opposition is reminiscent of its fight during an earlier budget crisis to stop the county from shifting money from jails into home detention, work release, a day-reporting center and drug and mental-health treatment.

After the union lost that battle, it sponsored an initiative that reduced the size of the County Council from 13 members to nine. Some union members have suggested the council could be reduced to five members, the same size as the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

The council's Budget Review and Adoption Committee on Wednesday endorsed the idea of taking $1.2 million from County Executive Ron Sims' proposed 2009 budget for county jails to keep alive a community-corrections program that supervise and counsel defendants who would otherwise go to jail.

On Thursday, Councilmember Kathy Lambert said budget leaders withdrew that decision for further study after Budget Director Bob Cowan told them it might not leave the jail enough money to pay overtime for corrections officers.

"We went, 'Oops, we didn't know that.' That was new information to us," Lambert said. The programs the council wants to save screen out dangerous offenders, she said: "If they're not dangerous, if they're just drunk and disorderly, do we need them to be in jail?"

Most of the threatened programs are part of the Community Center for Alternative Programs, to which about 200 defendants report each day and which provide drug counseling, life-skill classes, and a GED-completion program.

Sims' proposed budget would end some programs Dec. 31 and eliminate others June 30 if the Legislature doesn't give the county new funding options. Sims' budget would fill a $93 million funding shortfall in the county's approximately $660 million general fund.

Councilmember Larry Gossett said it would be "foolhardy and unhealthy" to eliminate programs that have slowed increases in the county's fast-rising jail costs.

"I will be one of those supporting the maintenance of some proven alternatives to incarceration" along with the jails themselves, he said.