Snohomish County government finds itself at a fiscal crossroads. Without significant changes to the way county government does business, its long-term fiscal health – as well as essential services such as public safety – will be unwisely weakened.
More importantly, Snohomish County also finds itself on the cusp of a series of decisions that will have profound effects on its future. Specifically, the county must reform and update various economic development policies, as well as update its comprehensive plan to balance our growing population with state growth management mandates. Those will be complex debates, but the county must put its fiscal house in order so those issues receive the attention they deserve. Our county’s long-term prosperity depends on it.
First, what is this fiscal crossroads?
Snohomish County faces a $13.4 million shortfall in the county’s general fund for 2005 based on current budget projections. That shortfall will grow to approximately $40 million in 2010 using those same assumptions. Since more than 70 percent of the general fund is dedicated to law enforcement and criminal justice, resulting across-the-board cuts from those shortfalls would be unacceptable.
To address this problem, county Executive Aaron Reardon has instituted a priority-based budgeting process. However, Reardon’s administration has utilized this process in greater detail than state government’s similar efforts earlier this year. To oversee this work, Reardon appointed an eight-member citizen “guidance team” that met regularly to review the work of county departments as they prioritized and honed their respective budgets for next year.
The goal of priority-based budgeting is to avoid indiscriminate, across-the-board cuts that do nothing but water down existing government services – with little benefit to taxpayers. Instead of such cuts, county departments proposed budgets to multi-departmental “results teams” tasked with using a restrained amount of funding to most efficiently provide for priorities identified in five interactive community forums this spring.
In this competitive process, county departments faced the risk that programs they have run for years would be deemed less of a priority than others and cut altogether. In turn, highly efficient programs that showed strong value to the county’s citizens might see increases in funding.
I can attest from overseeing this process that hard questions were asked, firm limits on county spending were set, and departments were encouraged to come up with creative solutions to do more with less. For the county’s first effort at this process, it largely succeeded. At key points during this process, members of the guidance team advised Reardon to keep pressure on departments to think outside the box and restrain the natural desire to spend more than might be prudent.
This new budget process wasn’t perfect, but it worked well. And it worked in a way that serves the citizens of Snohomish County better by focusing on the results they want, not the programs government administers. Indeed, in some ways government will shrink because of the budget realities facing the county. Layoffs will occur and desired programs and projects will be put off for better times.
It’s also important to note that Reardon had county staff use more conservative budget assumptions than in the past. Now, budget projections assume neither an increase in property taxes nor a voter-approved tax to pay to run the new county jail. At the same time, current projections do include the anticipated rise in the cost of salaries and benefits for county employees. Reardon and the County Council will have to work together to bridge the gap between past assumptions and current reality.
I am in the somewhat unique position of having worked with the Republican members of the council and Reardon. Last fall I strongly supported my father, Dave Earling, who faced Reardon in a hotly contested race; few people in Snohomish County worked harder to defeat Aaron Reardon in that election than I. However, I know from my days working with Aaron when I was in the biotechnology industry, and he was in the Legislature, that he is a talented public servant capable of strong performance in his current job.
I also know the Republicans on the council are hard-working elected officials, dedicated to serving their constituents well. Obviously, there are differences in party affiliation between the council majority and the executive. But I believe they share the philosophy that government must live within its means, and that within those means government must deliver core services like public safety, elections and land-use planning as efficiently and effectively as possible.
There will inevitably be some policy differences between the budget Reardon has proposed and the budget the council passes back to him for his signature. Such differences are a healthy statement of a strong democracy, especially in times of significant change in how government does business. But these tough decisions must be made to assure the fiscal stability that will allow proper debate of more pressing issues to come.
Eric Earling served as one of eight members of the citizen guidance team overseeing recent changes in the Snohomish County government’s budget. He is a lifelong resident of the county.
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