Sheriff's Dept. takes brunt of new King County budget plan

Metropolitan King County Council budget negotiators have completed a 2011 spending plan that would reduce the number of layoffs in most departments — but not in the Sheriff's Office, where deputies have refused to give up a scheduled raise next year.

The plan, which goes before the Budget and Fiscal Management Committee Friday, responds to a $60 million shortfall by proposing to eliminate more than 300 jobs through layoffs and attrition. A final council vote is set for Monday.

Voters this month rejected a sales-tax increase proposed by county officials to maintain criminal-justice services at current levels and replace the rundown Youth Services Center courthouse in Seattle.

With property-tax revenue stagnating and sales-tax revenue plummeting, the budget reduces funding for prosecutors, probation supervisors, jails and sheriff's deputies, and trims or eliminates some public health programs.

The already slimmed-down prosecutor's office is bracing for the loss of 16 deputies and eight support staff, which will harm its ability to prosecute burglaries, car thefts and property crimes against seniors, said Ian Goodhew, deputy chief of staff to Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg.

The council budget would save some programs County Executive Dow Constantine had proposed to eliminate or slash, including support for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, counseling for youths who assault their relatives, Family Court Services and court-appointed advocates for abused or neglected children.

Family Court Services would be retained by raising fees for litigants who are able to pay.

Many other county employees would keep their jobs because they agreed through their labor unions to give up cost-of-living allowances.

The budget creates a $1.5 million "criminal justice reserve" to respond to any emergencies resulting from reduced public-safety spending.

Proposed by Constantine and revised by the council's bipartisan budget-leadership team, the $5.1 billion budget is likely to be the first since 2002 to be adopted with less than a unanimous vote.

One budget-team member, Reagan Dunn, walked out of a meeting last week and declined to attend subsequent meetings after other members refused to shift money to the Sheriff's Office from other departments.

If the proposed budget is adopted, Dunn said, "We're going to create the lowest level of police services anywhere in the state in unincorporated King County. For someone whose wife and baby boy live in unincorporated King County, like many other citizens I'm very concerned. We rely on local government to keep the community safe. ... I think we've created a budget that doesn't meet the minimum standards here."

Sheriff Sue Rahr, facing layoffs of 28 deputies and elimination of more than 40 vacant positions, has said she would disband all property-crime-investigation teams, close storefront offices and reduce other services. The latest budget directs her to keep two property-crimes detectives.

Rahr told the council earlier this week the budget would reduce the number of deputies to 0.65 per 1,000 people served, compared to an average of 1.5 officers per 1,000 for city police departments in King County.

Julia Patterson, chairwoman of the council's budget-leadership team, said she was unhappy about Dunn's walkout and his opposition to the budget plan. "We implored him to stay," she said.

Patterson said other members of the budget team agreed with Constantine that savings generated by employees agreeing to give up cost-of-living adjustments should be used to save jobs in their own departments.

"All those employees showed a tremendous amount of goodwill in helping us close this difficult budget," Patterson said. "If we turned around and took the savings generated by their leaving the COLA on the table and used it to buy back the sheriff's budget, they would never trust us again."

Councilmembers Larry Gossett and Kathy Lambert are also on the budget team.

The King County Police Officers Guild, which represents sheriff's deputies, is the largest employee union that has refused to go without a pay increase next year. Guild President Steve Eggert told Constantine's office in September the union had negotiated a 5 percent pay raise in good faith.

"We expected that the County was doing the same," he wrote in an e-mail.

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

Information in this article, originally published Nov. 11, 2010, was corrected Nov. 12, 2010. A previous version of this story had an incorrect number of staff for the prosecutor's office. The correct number is eight.