Big Cuts are Coming

A Sobering Look at the City Budget

Hum Dinger of Harbingers

Notice the cuts to library hours?

Did you hear that the city was considering cutting summer camps for disabled kids?

Unfortunately, these are just a foretaste of what is to come. 

Big Money Agenda

This council was elected by Tim Ceis, lobbyist/life partner to the Seattle Chamber President, and convinced voters to support them with fanciful promises about public safety so they could enact their only actionable agenda–protecting the rich and corporations from higher taxes. 

The budget picture is looking pretty darn bleak because of it.

The problem with their anti-government ideology is that these taxes fund things like library staffing, programming for kids so they have safe places to be when out of school, and housing for people without a roof over their heads.

A Fantastic Budget Breakdown

Kevin Schoenfeld had a great piece out at the end of March breaking down the city budget issues. Aside from his occasional snark, his analysis was outstanding. 

Unless I cite another source, my facts below are pulled from his excellent article. I encourage you to read it in full. This is my summary and analysis, but based on his hard work. I’m grateful he took the time to write it up.

Like I’ve said many times, his article makes it clear that the whole “we’ll audit the budget and find lots of savings” claim was obvious baloney, and now this new city council has to figure out what to do. 

He notes that we have a $230 million deficit coming, with a general fund that is $1.7 billion. Fully $1.5B of that is spent in just seven departments. We spread the other $200M across about thirty five more. 

Cuts in almost every place are going to hurt, and chances are it’s the working people of this city who will feel the pain.

Those smaller, less prominent departments include vital services like Early Learning and K-12 support, the Offices of Civil Rights, Labor Standards, Economic Development, Sustainability, Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, and Environment and Arts and Culture. It funds much of what happens in the Departments of Neighborhoods, Planning and Community Development, and Construction and Inspections.

Even a radically conservative idea like eliminating all of those departments wouldn’t fix the budget problem. Plus, many are critical, and the people who depend on the programs run by these departments won’t let them go without a fight. 

The Seven Big Departments

That takes us back to the 7 big departments.

As Schoenfeld notes, those big departments are all pretty close to untouchable. Police and fire are politically protected, and SDOT is almost as sacrosanct. Parks already receive nearly as little money as a voter-passed statute requires, so there is almost no wiggle room there. 

Finance and admin includes “indigent defense services, jail services, and a pool of money that pays out claims against the city,” and isn’t particularly amenable to cuts. HR is largely stuff like health insurance for city employees in all those untouchable programs, like the police, plus the city’s pension obligations. 

That leaves the Human Services Department, which spends its money on homelessness programming, and other services for “elderly, youth, public health, affordability, and safe communities.” 

Kevin doesn’t say this, but I think Human Service is almost certainly going to take a hit. Their primary constituencies are people the Mayor and Council are widely understood to think of as “activists,”  who are somehow less real than those salt-of-the-earth corporate lobbyists they like to pal around with. 

Anyway, the Council also has the ability to redirect some funds that are currently “dedicated”, but only dedicated by previous council ordinance, not state law. This council can rewrite those ordinances and do what it pleases with the money. 

The problem is, those JumpStart payroll taxes currently fund mainly affordable housing, and make significant contributions to economic revitalization, Green New Deal investments, and equitable development initiatives. These are all vital and popular too.

The Council and the Mayor are boxed in by their anti-progressive-revenue ideology. And after Schoenfeld published his analysis, the city agreed to a huge raise for police officers. Whether that was a good idea is its own discussion–but presumably this makes the budget gap even bigger. 

Cuts are hard. Remember that cut to summer camps–one of the first the city managed to actually float to the public? 

You can bet the blowback was big; thankfully the administration already backed down.

So then . . . what are they going to cut?