County budget won’t tax to the max
The Metropolitan King County Council, which authorized three new taxes earlier this week, won’t take an additional tax bite allowed by a recent state Supreme Court decision.
Although the Supreme Court on Nov. 8 struck down tax-limiting Initiative 747, the county won’t use its new taxing authority to increase property taxes by as much as 6 percent. Instead, the council’s budget committee approved a 2008 budget Friday that holds the tax increase to I-747’s limit of 1 percent.
“I feel strongly we need to honor the spirit of 747 in the 2008 budget,” council budget Chairman Bob Ferguson, D-Seattle, said after a bipartisan budget team pared the size of County Executive Ron Sims’ proposed budget to $4.9 billion.
Next year’s $639 million current-expense fund is up slightly from this year’s estimated $632 million. That fund, supported by local taxes, represents many basic government functions, from courts and jails to elections.
Much of the $4.9 billion budget - which includes public health, sewage treatment and Metro Transit - is funded through user fees and grants.
Sims’ budget office projects that a slowing economy will draw down reserves this year and leave a $25 million shortfall in 2009.
The County Council is expected to approve the budget easily Monday. Eight of the council’s nine members, sitting as the budget committee, voted unanimously in favor of the spending plan Friday.
The budget also would create a stand-alone Elections Division. Several advisory groups have suggested that election management could be improved by relieving the elections director of responsibility for records, licensing and animal services.
Carolyn Duncan, spokeswoman for Sims, said he was pleased with the council’s budget. “Every major executive initiative was funded, and at the same time the council exercised fiscal restraint and left the reserves he proposed untouched,” she said.
Ferguson said, “The executive, to his credit, sent over what I would describe as a lean budget.” The council’s revised budget, he said, was “leaner still.”
Kathy Lambert, R-Redmond, a member of the council budget team, said she was pleased the budget included more money to train sheriff’s deputies. “It will improve how they do their recruiting; it will improve how they do their training,” she said.
Council members said they reduced Sims’ budget by $40 million. Some of those reductions reflect differing accounting procedures, however. The council decided not to earmark $15 million as a contingency fund for emergency repairs to the wastewater system, but that money is still available for that purpose, said Budget Director Bob Cowan.
County Council members on Tuesday approved three new taxes that collectively will cost about $87 a year for a median-income family with a $400,000 home:
• A property tax of 10 cents per $1,000 assessed valuation to rebuild deteriorating levees, as flood protection, for communities along the Green, Cedar, Snoqualmie and other rivers.
• A sales tax of one-tenth of a percent to fund treatment programs for people with mental illness or addictions. The spending is expected to reduce jail and hospital emergency-room costs.
• A property tax of 5.5 cents per $1,000 assessed valuation to fund a ferry district that will operate the Vashon Island passenger ferry and the Elliott Bay Water Taxi and will pilot other ferry routes on Puget Sound and Lake Washington.
The council also voted Tuesday to raise Metro bus fares by 25 cents, for the first time since 2001, because of rising fuel and labor costs.
The $4.9 billion 2008 budget is up about $900 million from this year, but most of the difference is a result of Metro Transit going from an annual budget to a biennial budget.
Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com