Sims' plans include insurance for children, global warming team

King County Executive Ron Sims said Monday he has a plan to bring medical insurance to "almost all" of the 16,000 children in the county who are uninsured.

Sims also announced, in his annual State of the County address to the Metropolitan King County Council, that he has assembled a "strike force" of top county officials to find ways to deal with global warming.

The executive said he would seek funding to hire half a dozen outreach workers who would try to enroll in Medicaid or other publicly funded insurance programs about 8,000 uninsured children who are eligible but aren't signed up.

For children who don't have federal- or state-subsidized insurance because their family incomes are above eligibility levels but whose families can't afford private insurance, Sims said after his address he will ask the County Council for money to pay their insurance premiums for the next three years.

That cost to the county to insure some of those children, he said, could be $5 million to $6 million. Details will be worked out by his recently created Children's Health Access Task Force.

After the three years, he said, he expects the state to provide insurance. "So many children in one of the wealthiest regions in the entire United States going without coverage is a blot on our record as a community, and we will change it," Sims said.

Sims, who previously announced several initiatives to reduce the county government's emissions of carbon dioxide and other climate-altering "greenhouse gases," said his global warming team will study changes the county must make in order to cope with climate change.

He said after his address that 57 bridges will need structural work to protect them from the fiercer winter storms that could result from climate change. He also said flood-control levees, including the Green River levees that protect low-lying parts of Kent, Renton and Tukwila, are at risk.

"People say it's not going to happen," he said of possible breaks in the levee system. "You can't say that. All you had to do was be there this past season and see it wouldn't take that much more to breach it."

If global warming results in a thinner snowpack in the Cascade Mountains and drier summers, Sims said, recycling of the region's wastewater will be needed to maintain a dwindling water supply.

Declaring that nearly all scientists now agree human activities are warming the environment, he told the County Council, "The time to defer or to delay or to deny is over."

County Council Chairman Larry Phillips, D-Seattle, praised Sims' attention to child health-care insurance and global warming.

"It's a reality," Phillips said of climate change. "There's no doubt about it."

Councilwoman Kathy Lambert, R-Redmond, said she was hopeful after Sims' address that he would support incinerating garbage to produce electricity as an alternative to burying garbage and burning fossil fuels for electricity.

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