EVERETT — The Snohomish County Council called department representatives to a meeting Tuesday to explain a projected $26 million overage in the budget.
On Aug. 14, the County Council expected to discuss a $5 million shortfall in tax revenue, only to learn four departments were projected to spend over their budgets, on top of an existing $16 million structural deficit. The council called representatives from these departments to present their budgets at an administrative meeting on Tuesday.
The four departments projected to overspend are District Court, the Office of Public Defense, the Sheriff’s Office and Corrections.
District Court
Judge Beth Fraser represented the Snohomish County District Court.
“The District Court has a long history of responsibly managing our budget,” she said. “We have spent within our budget for at least the last decade.”
The department’s main challenge, Fraser said, is added wages and benefits — finalized in a contract with the District Court’s employees union — added after the general fund biennial budget was approved.
The biennial budget was finalized November 2024. The court’s collective bargaining agreement was signed in January 2025.
The agreement controlled the 2025 wage increase, known as a cost-of-living adjustment, and moved 60% of staff into a higher pay bracket, Fraser said.
“We strongly support our employees. We are in no way critical of these changes,” she said. “But, please bear in mind these changes are projected to add $2,487,901 to our 2025-2026 biennial budget in wage and benefits alone.”
The county sets aside estimated COLA funding in a nondepartmental fund, outside of the general budget, to disperse once union contracts are signed, spokesperson Kari Bray said in an email.
District Court received just under $490,000 to help offset 2025 COLAs, leaving a needed $2 million to balance its biennial budget, Fraser said.
Other than the added wages and benefits, Fraser said, District Court is operating within the budget set by the County Council.
Office of Public Defense
Director of the Office of Public Defense Jason Schwarz presented three places OPD is overspending.
When OPD has a conflict of interest, counsel is still provided. In that case, OPD pulls from a group of outside attorneys known as a conflict panel.
For the biennium, OPD is on track to spend $2.4 million more on conflict panel attorneys than budgeted, Schwarz said.
“Those costs are exclusively out of OPD’s control. We do not choose whether there’s an ethical conflict in a case,” he said. “I’m not a judge, and I don’t get to sign the orders that say OPD appoints new counsel.”
OPD often needs experts as witnesses, investigators and other case-related resources. The office is projected to spend $2.5 million more than is budgeted for expert services in the biennial budget.
Schwarz cited wage increases, contract workers’ requests for higher pay and changes in case law as reasons for the overspending on experts.
“There’s been case law in the last five years about youth who are charged with crimes and the ability to be rehabilitated,” he said. “Meaning the defense attorney who’s representing a youth needs to do a lot of social background history, not just fight the case.”
Attorneys working murder cases are paid through a different OPD budget called “aggravated murder,” Schwarz said. Aggravated murder costs are expected to be over by $800,000.
“I expect that, in 2026, at least one if not two of the cases are going to go to trial,” Schwarz said. “That could change. I don’t know, but if it does, it will be even more than I have budgeted.”
A multiple co-defendant case is taking place at the moment, he said. Multiple attorneys, interpreters and experts are needed for the one case.
In total, OPD is expected to be $5.7 million over its biennial budget.
“These are overages that we are used to that we see year after year. Those overages are more than we see year after year, but they are the same,” Schwarz said. “There is a lot of variability in OPD’s costs.”
Often, the county council will allocate more money to public safety at the end of a budget cycle. In December 2024, $5.45 million from the general fund went to the sheriff’s office, corrections and OPD to cover overages.
“If you looked at the budget OPD sent to the executive, you would find that it would cover the amount that I am spending,” Schwarz said about the recommendations he gave to the budget process last year. “I expected this. I asked for these funds.”
Sheriff’s Office and Corrections
For both departments, increased wages, benefits and overtime were the primary reasons for overspending, according to Sheriff Susanna Johnson of the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office.
In total, the sheriff’s office requested $4.2 million to balance its biennial budget, and corrections requested $14.7 million.
The sheriff’s office received $800,000 for its 2025 COLAs. However, that money only helped with wage increases, Johnson said. It did not cover benefits, which had to be funded from other budgets.
Also, corrections support staff received a pay increase, Johnson said.
“It was not funding,” she said. “That’s commitments that the county made through collective bargaining agreements that they did not give us the money for.”
The new collective bargaining agreement with the Corrections Guild specifies, when staffing is at 175 full-time employees or less, after an employee works an eight-hour overtime shift at the standard time-and-a-half rate, any additional overtime will pay 2.25 times normal salary.
“We received no additional funds for that,” Johnson said. Of corrections’ overtime, 64% is for that 2.25 multiplier, she said.
Washington state still ranks last in the country for the number of law-enforcement officers per capita, according to FBI data. These staffing issues continue to affect Snohomish County, Johnson said.
“When we have vacancy issues, we have to have people out there on overtime,” she said.
Johnson also noted increased pharmacy costs for inmate care, increased fuel and car maintenance costs and janitorial costs jumping to $6,000 a month as causes of overspending.
Questions yet to be answered.
Some of the overspending may be a result of the transition to Snohomish County’s first biennial budget, said Dawn Cicero, the Sheriff’s Office finance manager.
“We don’t have a 2026 COLA yet. So to say we have a biennium budget is really not true because we are not funded as a biennium budget,” she said. Also, since the budget was written in 2024, 2023 numbers were used to forecast the needs for 2025 and 2026.
The council understands this first two-year budget may come with some negatives, council member Sam Low said in an email, and adjustments may be needed in the future.
County council member Jared Mead acknowledged in an interview that overspending for public safety departments is common. However, this year’s overspending is far above what it usually is, he said.
Low agrees. While OPD often needs more money to balance out a 3% to 5% overage at the end of a budget cycle, he said to Schwarz on Tuesday, “What has changed so much in six months that has made us get from a traditional 5% overage up to a 20% to 25%?”
“The big question I’m trying to get to the bottom of right now,” Mead said, “‘What’s driving the difference between this year and previous years?’”
Taylor Scott Richmond: 425-339-3046; taylor.richmond@heraldnet.com; X: @BTayOkay
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