Whatcom County Budget Woes

Barbara Brenner represents the third district on the Whatcom County Council.

On November 12, members of the Whatcom County Council had an opportunity to tighten their belts in this time of declining revenue without additional harm to necessary services. Instead, the executive’s recommendation contained numerous inefficiencies and the council majority voted for 99.9 percent of the recommendation. This year, 2003, the budget will be propped up with rainy-day reserve funds. Nobody is saying what the county will do when the reserves run out.

I proposed the following budget amendments. All but two were voted down.

Move the hearing examiner’s office from the Civic Building to a County Council office room. The County Council pays a per-square-foot charge for any hearing examiner office outside the County Council office. There are no conflicts-of-interest or appearance-of-fairness problems in making this move. If we are worried about appearance of fairness we certainly should not have, as is the current practice, employees making recommendations to the county council in executive session to increase their own salaries and benefits. (Motion failed)

Contract out alcohol assessments instead of doing them in-house. The accusations from Whatcom County District Court regarding poor performance with private agencies are shocking. However, we have an obligation to investigate the charges, some of which include criminal behavior, before we judge and condemn all private treatment providers.

The charges include falsification of reports, regular refusal to do urinalysis, not evaluating the true needs of defendants, regularly inconsistent and tardy reports, and regularly unacceptable evaluations. The accusations were unsubstantiated. If we have adequate private providers we should be using them. It is certainly improper to accept the charges of misconduct without giving the private providers an opportunity to respond.

The county administration said that another reason to do assessments in-house is to insure they are done independently and are free from undue financial influence. However, a person is ordered to undergo assessment by a county employee (judge). If the assessment is done in-house, a county employee does it. How is it performed more objectively or independently by a county employee who works for the same organization as the person who ordered the assessment in the first place? What kind of undue financial influence does contracting this service out to a private, independent third-party assessment agency create as long as we agree that the same agency cannot provide treatment? (These questions were never answered.) (Motion failed)

1. Eliminate the Deputy Administrator’s position. This position, in fact, creates a de-facto second county executive. The public did not elect two county executives. The charter has no provision for two. Calling the second executive a “deputy” does not change the fact that we have two executives, paid for with public dollars. The executive has many department heads to advise him and appear for him in public if he is not available. He also has a competent clerical and secretarial staff. He doesn’t need a second executive. (Motion failed)

2. Please eliminate the $50,000 “Executive Miscellaneous Fund.” The types of expenditures in that fund are exactly the types of expenditures the council should scrutinize and approve as part of our budget process. Otherwise they appear to be gifts from the County Executive which can have a political campaign overtone. (Motion failed)

1. Eliminate the $50,000 funding for the Economic Development Council (EDC). It has been a waste of money and has even been counter-productive to council positions at times. The best economic development efforts for county government are efforts to make our permitting process fair and efficient for everyone. (Motion passed. However, a council member then moved to reinstate $15,000 to the EDC, and the council majority agreed. Still a lot of money for a failed program.)

2. Eliminate the $38,000 for the Law and Justice Council. It was supposed to be an advisory body with a beginning (creation and appointment of members), a middle (investigate issues), and an end (make final recommendations). It did that long ago. A volunteer task force can easily do any fine-tuning. In fact, a task force was recently formed when a county administrator did not like a Law and Justice Council recommendation. (Motion passed)

3. Fund the Sean Humphrey Hospice House for $15,000. There is no other facility in our region that provides all types of necessary and personal services in one place for people who are near death. Government’s first obligation is to those who are most vulnerable. The council funded the Sean Humphrey House in 1999 for $18,000 and has not funded it since. There was one $5,000 contribution from the executive’s miscellaneous fund since 1999. (Motion failed)

1. Reinstate the crisis management services and the ongoing support program for managing juveniles with behavioral mental health issues that were cut. Northwest Care Advocates (NWCA) provided these services. The Law and Justice Council recommended the NWCA programs in the first place because previously the county was unable to adequately fulfill those obligations. The county has a liability for lack of adequate services. Before these programs existed there were injuries to staff and juveniles. These programs reduced injuries. There have been accolades about the service provided by NWCA. The cost of reinstating these programs is minimal, but the consequences of not providing adequate services to mentally ill juveniles in detention are enormous. (Motion failed)

2. Audit the learning programs in Juvenile Detention before continuing funding. Our budget contains references to performance measures, but I haven’t seen any performance measures for the educational element. Benchmarks could include calculations as to how many teens are graduating from the GED program and how many are advancing at all. I have received several complaints that the class programs are “glorified babysitting.” What percentage is getting high school equivalencies? How many is that per year? (These important questions were never answered.) (Motion failed)

3. Please contract out the Behavioral Health Project. We have many qualified private professionals who could provide excellent service. We should not be adding a county position that can be well handled by the private sector. This project reminds me of the service that was excellently provided by Northwest Care Advocates and was heavily lobbied against by the county administration. What will be the qualifications for the “professional employee” in this position? Will it require the employee to have a master’s degree in psychology or a related field? When this was contracted out there were three persons, including master’s level, performing the functions. How will one person handle that many juveniles without massive burnout? (These important questions were never answered.) (Motion failed)

Please eliminate the Teen Adventure Program and grant the $17,243 (cost of supplies, services, and charges from the Teen Adventure Program) to the Whatcom County Boys and Girls Club. The original budget for the program in 1999 was $32,897. Today the budget is $73,736. Of that money, $56,493 is for one position. When we have private agencies that do an excellent job performing the same function, government has no business creating jobs that directly compete with the private sector.

I made my concerns known when we first created this program. I was assured it would not keep growing in cost. The cost has more than doubled in four years. Most of the cost is for one county position. In economic good times this may not be a problem, but I don’t believe we can justify it now. It would be more cost effective to assist a non-profit private agency to continue the program. (Motion failed)

Please add an enforcement position. The biggest complaint I get is the lack of expeditious enforcement. I believe one reason for a large percentage of violations is that the county appears inconsistent regarding enforcement. The council has added much work onto the shoulders of enforcement personnel. We have an obligation to adequately staff enforcement positions if we are serious about the laws we pass. If we had adequate enforcement maybe the council majority wouldn’t be passing sweeping legislation that creates undue burdens on those who do not violate because of the few bad apples. Adequate enforcement staff will likely reduce costs by insuring swift compliance and discouraging other violators. (Motion failed)

Please eliminate the position of solid waste specialist. The person in that position is not qualified. The council majority recently voted to spend $40,000 to contract out a recycling-needs assessment. That would have never been contracted out if we had a qualified solid waste specialist on staff. When I originally brought this issue to the council’s attention, I contacted other applicants who had applied for the job. One of the other applicants had many qualifications and had been the solid waste specialist for years in another community. Another applicant had years of experience working for a local solid waste reduction/recycling agency. Until or unless we have a qualified person as solid waste specialist, we should not fund the position. (Motion failed)

Please fund the Whatcom County Assessor’s request to maintain the assessor/treasurer database system. The assessor is currently charged over $100,000 for in-house maintenance that he does not use because the assessor’s office contracts with Computech for most maintenance services. Computech costs about half of what he is being charged in-house. Discontinue the practice of averaging in-house computer maintenance costs between all departments, which unfairly charges those who use less. Accurately calculate how much of those in-house services the assessor actually uses. Then reduce the amount the assessor is charged to the actual amount of service used. The savings to the assessor’s office should more than offset the assessor’s request. (Motion failed)

Please fund the necessary maintenance for the assessor/treasurer database in the Whatcom County Treasurer’s office for $50,000 for the same reasons as the need in the assessor’s office. The assessor and treasurer are two of a minority of elected department heads. The executive’s office may not have as great an interest in the needs of department heads who do not operate under his control, but we have an obligation to carefully weigh the information we receive from them. There will always be competition for dollars between department heads who work under the executive and elected department heads. Elected department heads count on us to insure objectivity. As one of the cheapest, most suspicious members of the county council, I am impressed by many years of consistently frugal and realistic requests from the treasurer. (Motion failed) §