Tag: budget cuts

City Council, housing, human services, Mayor Harrell

Council Digs In on Harrell’s “IOU” Budget
Source: City Council central staff budget presentation

By Erica C. Barnett

The city council started breaking down Mayor Bruce Harrell’s budget in earnest on Tuesday, zeroing in on the mayor’s high-level plans to balance the budget by using revenues the city previously allocated to other purposes, including the JumpStart payroll tax, to help resolve a $141 million budget gap that is expected to grow every year through at least 2026.

Overall, the mayor’s budget would add about $32 million in net ongoing new expenditures (total expenditures minus cuts) next year, and about $52 million in 2024. Over two years, those proposed new expenditures include $8.8 million to make the Seattle Community Safety Initiative, a youth gun violence prevention program run by the nonprofit Community Passageways, permanent;  $3 million for the Regional Peacekeepers Collective, another program run by Community Passageways; $1.2 million a year to keep the Public Defender Association’s Co-LEAD shelter program going; $11 million over two years for police hiring bonuses at SPD; and at least $13 million to expand the city’s Unified Care Team, which does outreach and encampment removals, and the Clean Cities Initiative, which clears trash and removes graffiti from buildings.

Every year, the mayor proposes a budget and the council amends and approves it. The process can be highly contentious, especially in lean years. Starting in 2021, the city has used the new JumpStart payroll tax—a payroll tax on the city’s largest employers—to fill revenue shortfalls caused by the COVID pandemic and the resulting economic downturn. Harrell’s budget would continue to use the JumpStart tax to fill the ongoing budget gap, using $86 million in JumpStart revenues to backfill the general fund in 2021, and $84 million in 2024.

Last year, anticipating that future mayors would continue trying to use JumpStart revenues for non-JumpStart purposes, the council passed a law codifying the existing, but never fully realized, JumpStart spending plan. The ordinance restricts JumpStart spending to four specific categories: Housing (primarily affordable rental housing for people making less than 30 percent of median income); local businesses and economic recovery; equitable development projects that increase opportunity and prevent displacement; and investments that support the city’s adopted Green New Deal priorities.

On Tuesday, Harrell and Mosqueda announced the beginning of a process that could lead to new progressive taxes or fees to pay for some of the programs his current budget relies on JumpStart to fund. The new Revenue Stabilization Work Group includes representatives from business, labor, and nonprofits, including the progressive Washington Budget and Policy Center and the Transit Riders Union.

The new law does allow the city to use the tax for other purposes in one circumstance: If general fund revenues fall below about $1.5 billion, the city can siphon off JumpStart funds equal to the gap between actual revenues and $1.5 billion. If general fund revenues were $1.4 billion, for example, the mayor and council could take up to $100 million from the JumpStart fund to address the shortfall.

Harrell’s budget would require the council to amend this newly adopted law so that the general fund “floor” would rise every year according to the rate of inflation (currently 7.6 percent), which would also increase the differential between revenue projections and the new floor. The change would set up JumpStart to permanently solve a structural budget gap that exists because general-fund revenues aren’t rising nearly as fast as inflation, including property taxes, which by law can only increase 1 percent a year.

As a memo from the council’s budget staff puts it, “the proposed policy change … could result in permanently backfilling revenue losses that are due to noninflationary factors in other funds. Put another way, the JumpStart Fund transfer would be permanently solving stability issues inherent with the existing [general fund] financing structure.”

The change would enable the city to rely on the JumpStart tax to provide a huge, permanent cushion for the overall budget by diverting more and more of the tax from its original purpose. Next year, for example, the general fund actually is close to $1.5 billion, the current floor, meaning that under current law, the city can’t use JumpStart revenues to pay for anything above that amount. If the council adopts Harrell’s proposal, the change would allow the mayor to remove $105 million from the JumpStart fund in 2023, $176 million in 2024, and $189 million in 2025.

Enjoying this article? PubliCola is supported entirely by readers like you. Help keep PubliCola sustainable by CLICKING HERE to become a one-time or monthly contributor.

Council budget Teresa Mosqueda said she was disappointed that Harrell proposed permanently changing the law governing how the payroll tax can be used, since the council agreed in principle back in August that the city could use JumpStart revenues in excess of previous projections, as long as those funds went to prevent budget cuts and “austerity.” At the time, those excess revenues amounted to $84 million in 2023 and $71 million in 2024—not much less than the amounts Harrell has proposed allocating.

“I think making these changes in perpetuity is very problematic to the sustainability of JumpStart and… concerning for this for the budget overall,” Mosqueda said. “To rely more and more on JumpStart creates greater instability for our overall budget going forward.”

Harrell’s proposal would also repurpose revenues from two other sources: The short-term rental tax on Airbnbs, which is earmarked for the Equitable Development Initiative (EDI); and state taxes on car services like Uber and Lyft, a fairly small revenue source that’s supposed to go to affordable housing.

District 2 (southeast Seattle) Councilmember Tammy Morales, who heads the committee that oversees EDI, said the program “is not just about affordable housing. It’s not just about senior housing. It really is about intentionally building space or the essential services that any healthy neighborhood needs and [providing] the opportunity to do it in a culturally appropriate way.” Although the Office of Housing funds housing projects, Morales continued, they often don’t pay for ground-floor services, like health clinics and day care centers, which is one reaseon the city started the Equitable Development Initiative in the first place.

“In asking departments to really tighten their belts, to look at where we can save money, we came up with the increase [for human service workers] of 4 percent, which would create anywhere between, I believe, $7 million to 12 million or so in savings, which allows us to do other things to help the same communities that they serve. And so we think that what we propose is consistent with the values that we set forth.”—Mayor Bruce Harrell

Harrell’s budget also includes an assumption that the city will spend $10 million less than what’s in the budget for the next two years, without identifying where those future savings will come from—a policy a council staffer referred to as an “IOU to come in under budget.” In 2022, the mayor achieved about $20 million in savings by placing “holds” on dozens of items the council added to its 2022 budget last year, including a new pre-filing diversion program for people over 25; money for a new health clinic for Asian Pacific Islander seniors; funding for the Mobile Crisis Team; and the expansion of an Office of Housing program that provides case management and housing stabilization to people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.

Mosqueda also flagged her disapproval of Harrell’s proposal to limit mandatory increases in human service providers’ wages at 4 percent a year—about half what they would receive under legislation the council, then led by Harrell, passed unanimously in 2019. As we reported, Harrell even added an amendment to the 2019 bill clarifying that it was important to provide inflationary wage increases during times of economic hardship, not just prosperity.

When PubliCola asked Harrell about this apparent about-face, the mayor said he saw no contradiction between his position three years ago and his proposal to effectively overturn that legislation now.

“What I said in 2019 [was], we have to recognize that social workers and mental health counselors and those providing some of these essential services are underpaid… through good times and bad times,” Harrell said. “In asking departments to really tighten their belts, to look at where we can save money, we came up with the increase of 4 percent, which would create anywhere between, I believe, $7 million to 12 million or so in savings, which allows us to do other things to help the same communities that they serve. And so we think that what we propose is consistent with the values that we set forth.”

On Tuesday, Harrell and Mosqueda announced the beginning of a process that could lead to new progressive taxes or fees to pay for some of the programs his current budget relies on JumpStart to fund. The new Revenue Stabilization Work Group includes representatives from business, labor, and nonprofits, including the progressive Washington Budget and Policy Center and the Transit Riders Union.

City Council, Cops, Crime, Equity, Featured, homelessness, labor, Mayor Durkan, Police

The Council Just Created a Blueprint for Defunding the Police, but Mayor Durkan Isn’t On Board

By Erica C. Barnett

This piece originally appeared at the South Seattle Emerald.

The city council’s budget committee approved package of cuts to the Seattle Police Department budget that would reduce the department’s size by about $3 million, representing around 100 positions, this year;, remove police from the Navigation Team, which removes unauthorized homeless encampments; and start the city on a path to fund new approaches to public safety that don’t involved armed officers. Most of the proposals aren’t direct budget cuts—which the mayor could simply ignore—but budget provisos, which bar the executive branch from spending money in a way other than how the council prescribes.

The council also voted narrowly to dismantle the Navigation Team itself, by laying off or transferring not just the 14 police officers on the team but the system navigators, field coordinators, and other civilian staff who do outreach to encampment residents and remove litter, sharps, and debris. (Those positions would be replaced by contracted service providers, which is how encampment outreach worked before the city brought it in-house last year). And they agreed in principle to $17 million in funding for community organizations, including $3 million to start a participatory budgeting process for 2021. 

Other cuts would eliminate the mounted patrol, cut SPD’s travel budget, eliminate the school resource officer program, and reduce the size of the public affairs department. Some of the 2020 reductions would be achieved be through attrition—eliminating vacant positions or not filling positions when officers leave.

Support The C Is for Crank

The C Is for Crank is supported entirely by generous contributions from readers like you.

If you enjoy breaking news, commentary, and deep dives on issues that matter to you, please support this work by donating a few bucks a month to keep this reader-supported site going.

If you don’t wish to become a monthly contributor, you can always make a one-time donation via PayPal, Venmo (Erica-Barnett-7) or by mailing your contribution to P.O. Box 14328, Seattle, WA 98104. I’m truly grateful for your support.

Another amendment, adopted 5-4, would reduce this year’s pay for SPD’s 13 command staff to the lowest rate allowed in their designated pay bands, a cut that would save around half a million dollars between September and the end of the year, according to sponsor Kshama Sawant. If the cuts were annualized, they would reduce the command staff’s pay by an average of $115,000 a year; police chief Carmen Best, who makes almost $300,000 a year, would see her salary cut to $171,000,.

In response to the council’s vote, a spokesperson for Mayor Jenny Durkan called the council’s proposal “unattainable and unworkable.”

“[With] a few hours’ discussion and without consulting the Chief of Police, City Council has voted to reduce the police force by 105 this year, cut the Chief’s salary by 40 percent, and eliminate the City’s team of specially trained social workers that conduct outreach and address encampments and RVs that pose significant public health and safety concerns,” the spokesperson said. 

The council is assuming that layoffs would have to be bargained with the police union and couldn’t occur until at least November, so the savings from cuts would work out to a higher dollar amount next year, when they would, in theory, be annualized. According to council budget chair Teresa Mosqueda, the cuts and transfers the council is proposing this year would amount to about $170 million in 2021, or about 41 percent of the police department’s budget.

“[With] a few hours’ discussion and without consulting the Chief of Police, City Council has voted to reduce the police force by 105 this year, cut the Chief’s salary by 40 percent, and eliminate the City’s team of specially trained social workers that conduct outreach and address encampments and RVs that pose significant public health and safety concerns.”—Statement from Mayor Jenny Durkan’s office

Taken together, the council’s amendments lay out a path forward for future cuts, and a commitment to reinvesting programs guided by the principles of community groups like the Decriminalize Seattle coalition. It’s important to know, however, that while the council can tell the mayor how it wants her to spend the budget, she is generally free to ignore their direction. (See, for example, the administration’s reluctance to expand the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program to provide hotel rooms and assistance to people living outdoors during the pandemic, or to pay for mobile showers for which funding was allocated last November)

In acknowledgement of this power differential—and the fact that labor negotiations may take longer than three months—each of the provisos includes a caveat ensuring that officers will still get paid if the city fails to reach agreement on specific layoffs by November, when the council majority wants the cuts to go into effect. “In every single one of the provisos that reduce spending … the council acknowledges that the chief may realize reductions differently than what the council is proposing,” public safety committee chair Lisa Herbold said. “These provisos are our recommendation for how to achieve the reductions based on the advice that we’ve received that make it more likely that we will be successful in bargaining.”

Across administrations, mayors and councils tend to bicker along predictable lines: The executive branch dismisses the council as ill-informed and naive, while the council accuses the mayor of obstructing progress and ignoring their directives. But the enmity between the two co-equal branches has reached a level under Durkan that many longtime city hall staffers call unprecedented.

Yesterday, for example, Durkan and Best called a press conference to condemn the council’s proposals, one of several they’ve held throughout the council’s budget process. During their prepared remarks, the mayor and chief suggested that cutting the police department would create a “gap in service” for people calling to report major crimes like burglaries and rapes, and accused council members of wanting to lay off officers “by race” because the usual order of layoffs would mean cutting the newest, most diverse cohorts of officers first.

“The mayor does not agree with the city council and a majority of the people of Seattle who believe that we need to substantially reduce the size and scope of the police department, and as a result she is spreading misinformation and fear about what the council intends to do in order to undermine our genuine efforts to transform comm safety in our city.”—Council president Lorena González

The council maintains that the police chief could go to the Public Safety Civil Service Commission to request out-of-order layoffs, but the mayor has argued this wouldn’t be practical on a mass scale. “For over a month, the Chief and Mayor have received guidance from labor relations and law that out-of-order layoffs are unlikely to be finalized in 2020, and will therefore not result in 2020 budget reductions,” the mayor’s spokesperson said.

Council president Lorena González said today that she was “disappointed” that “our labor relations division, which lives in the executive department, [is being] utilized in a politically motivated fashion to advance the goal of never seeing layoffs of badge and gun jobs at the Seattle Police Department.” González suggested the real issue is that Durkan “does not agree with the city council and a majority of the people of Seattle who believe that we need to substantially reduce the size and scope of the police department, and as a result she is spreading misinformation and fear about what the council intends to do in order to undermine our genuine efforts to transform comm safety in our city.”

The council’s unanimous vote for one of the most impactful pieces of defunding legislation—an amendment directing the chief to issue “immediately issue layoff notices” to 32 sworn officers—can be seen as an effort to show a unified front. Or it could be a sign that the often-divided council is in genuine agreement on an approach to defunding SPD. Some of the most surprising remarks this afternoon came from council member Alex Pedersen, whose house has been targeted by protesters urging him to support the goal of defunding SPD by 50 percent. Addressing police officers directly, Pedersen said, “I appreciate the good work so many of you do. At the same time, you’re asked to do too much. You’re sent into complex situations that other professionals in our community might be better equipped to handle.

“You’re also part of a system born out of racism,” Pedersen continued, “and despite progress and reforms, that institutional racism of police departments here and across the nation continues to have a disproportionate negative impact on people of color. By rethinking what public safety really means, by centering Black and Indigenous people and people of color, by taking a thoughtful approach, we can seize this historic opportunity to disrupt institutional racism and achieve real community safety.”

City Council, City Hall, Featured, Police, public safety

Durkan, Best Decry Council’s Proposed SPD Budget Cuts as Too Fast, “Wrong Year”

By Paul Kiefer

In a joint press conference Tuesday afternoon, Mayor Jenny Durkan responded to the City Council’s proposal to cut the Seattle Police Department’s remaining 2020 budget by about $3 million with backhanded praise, saying the council was “looking in the right places but in the wrong year.”

The majority of the council, with the exception of Kshama Sawant, has united around a plan that would cut 100 positions from SPD’s budget, relying on a combination of attrition and layoffs that would, if all goes according to schedule, start in November. The midyear budget discussions were sparked by an unanticipated 2020 budget shortfall of more than $300 million.

In her remarks, Durkan emphasized that any major reforms to SPD will take a year or more to implement because of the combined challenges of the pandemic, the West Seattle Bridge closure and (ironically) months of protests. “2020 is not the best playing field to discuss further reductions to SPD and reinvestment in community,” Durkan said.

The proposed layoffs, though they would only amount to about half the cuts, have been a point of contention for Best and Durkan, who maintain the council has no legal authority to propose “out of order” layoffs of more-senior officers.

Ordinarily, the least-senior police officers are subject to layoffs first. But this, Durkan and Best said, would “gut” the most diverse group of officers in SPD’s history and reverse progress on improving the diversity of the police department. (Best characterized this possibility as the council proposing “layoffs based on race.”) To get around this problem, the council has proposed “out of order” layoffs targeting officers doing functions the council wants to reduce or eliminate, like SWAT and the Navigation Team.

According to Durkan, while a Public Safety Civil Service Commission (PSCSC) rule allowing the police chief to request out-of-order layoffs has been used in the past for individual cases, doing so on the scale suggested by the city council would require Chief Best to “justify every single decision,” which would draw out the layoff process well past the end of the year. I have followed up with the mayor’s office for clarification about the legal reasoning behind this claim.

Support The C Is for Crank

The C Is for Crank is supported entirely by generous contributions from readers like you.

If you enjoy breaking news, commentary, and deep dives on issues that matter to you, please support this work by donating a few bucks a month to keep this reader-supported site going.

If you don’t wish to become a monthly contributor, you can always make a one-time donation via PayPal, Venmo (Erica-Barnett-7) or by mailing your contribution to P.O. Box 14328, Seattle, WA 98104. I’m truly grateful for your support.

Best also criticized the council for proposing that her department lay off dozens of officers “basically overnight,” arguing that there would be a “service gap” while the city researches and organizes alternative emergency response teams. This gap could mean, she claimed, that when someone called 911 at midnight to report a rape or robbery in process, an officer might not be able to respond right away. None of the specific positions the council has proposed cutting are patrol officers who respond to 911 calls.

Durkan and Best did not accurately characterize several of the council’s other proposals, including their plan to civilianize data-driven policing by transferring this division—which analyzes policing data and makes much of it available to the public— from SPD to the Department of Finance and Administrative Services (FAS). Although the council has said they proposed the move to put police data in more objective civilian hands, Best said the council believed that “we would be better off as a police department if we do not use data.”

In another instance, Best said the council’s proposed layoffs would completely eliminate SPD’s public affairs unit, forcing the media to submit all questions to the separate public records division. In fact, although one council amendment would result in the layoffs of all four sworn staff in the department’s Public Affairs Unit, that proviso would not affect the unit’s civilian staff, who also respond to press questions.

Similarly, Mayor Durkan accused the council of proposing the complete elimination of implicit bias training from the department. In reality, the council’s proposal would withhold funding for implicit bias trainings “until the Executive submits a report describing the effectiveness of shifting officer behavior through implicit bias trainings,” and would direct the department to look into online trainings as a cheaper option. 

Durkan has already proposed $76 million in cuts to SPD budget in 2021, but most of those savings would result from transferring some functions, like the 911 call center and the Office of Police Accountability, out of SPD. Only $20 million would come from cuts to the SPD budget, mostly through attrition, leaving positions vacant, and cutting the budget for security at special events.

The council will take up the budget proposals—including council member Kshama Sawant’s competing package, which calls for much deeper and more immediate cuts—tomorrow morning at 10am.

 

City Council, Cops, Featured, Mayor Durkan, Police, public safety

Durkan’s Proposed $20 Million Cut to Police Is Just $4 Million More Than Initially Planned
The overall budget picture, via City Budget Office.

After weeks of soaring, budget-speech-style rhetoric about “reimagining the police” and “working with community,” Mayor Jenny Durkan’s proposed midyear police budget cut of $20 million, or just 5 percent of the department’s $400 million budget, was underwhelming. Moreover, according to sources familiar with Durkan’s initial budget balancing package, the proposed cut is only one percentage point (or $4 million) higher than the one Mayor Durkan proposed internally three weeks ago, before protests against police violence upended the city’s business-as-usual approach to public safety. That $4 million can be accounted for by Durkan’s proposal to delay the construction of a second North Precinct for the department.

Despite demands from activists against police violence to start cutting SPD right away, the 5 percent cut will not even reduce the size of the police force. As a presentation on the budget cuts makes clear, SPD is on track to hire and train enough new officers to make up for the expected rate of attrition through the end of the year. The presentation emphasizes that SPD is taking the biggest budget hit, in dollars, of any department; it does not point out the fact that this is because SPD is by far the largest department in the city.

SPD spent an extra $6.3 million this year policing protests over a period of 12 days, including the ones that led to the Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone near the East Precinct. That $6.3 million paid for 72,619 hours of overtime.

None of the changes proposed for SPD’s budget in 2020 represent a realignment of priorities; rather, they nibble around the edges by cutting things like new IT investments and cars.

SPD’s midyear budget adjustment also does not include any changes to the Navigation Team, the group of police officers and Human Services Department employees who do outreach and remove encampments around the city. Currently, the SPD budget includes $2.4 million for the Navigation Team, which pays for one lieutenant, two sergeants, and nine officers. School resource officers—police who provide security at schools, a role that is also extremely controversial—have been repurposed to go out with the Navigation Team while schools are closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Support The C Is for Crank
During this unprecedented time of crisis, your support for truly independent journalism is more critical than ever before. The C Is for Crank is a one-person operation supported entirely by contributions from readers like you.

Your $5, $10, and $20 monthly donations allow me to do this work as my full-time job. Every supporter who maintains or increases their contribution during this difficult time helps to ensure that I can keep covering the issues that matter to you, with empathy, relentlessness, and depth.

If you don’t wish to become a monthly contributor, you can always make a one-time donation via PayPal, Venmo (Erica-Barnett-7) or by mailing your contribution to P.O. Box 14328, Seattle, WA 98104. Thank you for reading, and supporting, The C Is for Crank.

The mayor’s budget announcement included a commitment from SPD to come up with proposals to cut its own budget by 30, 40, and 50 percent for 2021, and a commitment from the city to “engage community to provide substantive input on what 2021 SPD budget choices should be made.”

It’s standard for the city to ask departments to come up with potential cuts themselves, but the case of SPD is different because protesters are clamoring for its budget to be cut in half (to begin with) and for the entire concept of public safety to be reimagined in a way that does not center police. The Human Services Department, for example, came up with 2020 cuts that include not filling vacancies and reducing or eliminating travel and trainings—but, unlike the ongoing outcry over police funding, no one is clamoring for fewer human or social services, so the process of asking HSD to propose its own cuts is less politically fraught.

The police department spent an extra $6.3 million this year policing protests over a period of 12 days, including the ones that led to the Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone near the East Precinct. That $6.3 million paid for 72,619 hours of overtime.

The mayor’s proposed 2020 budget balancing package would also draw on funds from several voter-approved levies to pay for normal city operations. For example, $10 million will be shifted this year from the Move Seattle Levy, which was supposed to fund new transportation capital projects, toward the day-to-day operations of the Seattle Department of Transportation. The library levy, which was supposed to fund increased services, will now pay for basic operations—keeping the lights on at branches that might otherwise see reduced hours or closures.

The council will be discussing the mayor’s proposed budget cuts this afternoon. Most members of the council support passing a progressive tax to reduce the impact of next year’s budget shortfall. A payroll tax on large employers with high-paid workers, proposed by council budget committee chair Teresa Mosqueda, has five co-sponsors (a majority), but council member Kshama Sawant has threatened to put her own competing employee hours tax on a citywide ballot if Mosqueda’s proposal goes through in its current form. Durkan has not endorsed Mosqueda’s package and has never supported any tax proposal at the city level.

Budget director Ben Noble said yesterday that the budget cuts the city expects to make in 2021 (again, in the absence of any progressive revenue package) will amount to about 10 percent of the city’s overall budget—an “unprecedented” amount that even dwarfs the cuts the city made under former mayor Mike McGinn during the Great Recession.