Layoffs, service cuts in Constantine's county budget

King County Executive Dow Constantine offered voters a stark choice in his 2011 budget proposal Monday: Raise the sales tax or accept a lower level of performance from police, courts and prosecutors.

In his first budget address to the Metropolitan King County Council, Constantine announced plans to lay off 200 employees and eliminate about 300 other positions from the county's 13,000 full-time employee work force.

He and elected criminal-justice officials warned that his budget would mean laying off low-seniority sheriff's deputies; putting property-crimes detectives back into patrol cars; curtailing supervision of drunken drivers, domestic-violence offenders and juveniles on probation; prosecuting fewer complex financial crimes; and plea-bargaining more cases.

The budget crunch is most acute for the general fund, which will have fewer dollars for the third straight year. Constantine proposed to spend 2.3 percent less than this year and 5.6 percent less than last year.

General-fund revenues are expected to fall $60 million short of the cost of continuing services at current levels.

Constantine proposed to eliminate 367 out of 4,323 positions financed from the general fund, three-quarters of which support criminal-justice programs.

He said the county spent reserves to avoid deeper cuts the past two years but can't do that again because nothing is left above what's needed to handle emergencies and maintain credit ratings.

The County Council plans to vote Nov. 22 on next year's budget.

Voters will decide Nov. 2 whether to raise the sales tax by two-tenths of a percentage point, to 9.7 percent on most purchases. Forty percent of the proceeds from King County Proposition 1 would go to cities, and a portion of the county's share would replace the county's Youth Services Center courthouse in Seattle.

Constantine said the money would restore, but not expand, public-safety programs.

Acknowledging that a tax increase won't be an easy sell in this economy, he used plain talk to answer citizens who suspect he's "just crying wolf" and has "big pots of money hidden away." He offered these retorts:

"The cupboards are quite bare."

"We raided the piggy bank."

"The era of easy fixes is over."

"The fees people pay for sewage treatment can't be used to pay for jails."

Constantine said he is seeking to rein in the growing cost of government by asking unions to forgo cost-of-living increases next year and by asking departments to make themselves 3 percent more productive each year.

Reaction from council members was mixed. Republican Reagan Dunn praised Constantine for presenting a "straightforward and gimmick-free" budget, but said he believes it can be balanced without new taxes and without unacceptable service reductions.

"It's not going to dismantle huge portions of the criminal-justice system," he said. " ... It's not yet a crisis."

Dunn and other Republicans voted against putting a sales-tax increase on the ballot in the absence of a rollback of other taxes.

County Councilmember Larry Phillips, a Democrat like Constantine, disagreed. Tea-party activists "would be thrilled with this budget," he said. "We're watching the systematic dismantling of county government."

Some opponents of the tax measure say Constantine hasn't done enough to slow the upward march of employee wages and benefits, citing a 5 percent pay increase that goes in effect for sheriff's deputies next year.

While several other unions have agreed to forgo cost-of-living adjustments next year, the King County Police Officers Guild, which represents sheriff's deputies, told the county last week it wouldn't give up its 2011 raises.

Democratic Councilmember Julia Patterson, who chairs the Budget Leadership Team, said Constantine "challenged many of the assumptions about how we do business" while working to reduce costs.

The budget team's somber theme for the season was displayed on the podium Patterson and other team members stood behind as they answered media questions: "Balancing the budget — sharing the pain."

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