Instead, their plan cuts payments to cities and counties and allows them to make up the money by raising your taxes.
The plan unveiled Tuesday would take a big step – in what may become a historic shift – away from state support for local government programs.
Chief House budget writer Ross Hunter said the state no longer can afford local-government costs taken on in the past two decades, particularly after the Legislature followed voters’ lead in repealing a motor vehicle tax and capping property taxes.
“Something has to give,” said Hunter, D-Medina. “So you either say we’re not going to run Medicaid, we’re not going to do a child welfare system, or you say, well, we’ve been trying to help out these cities and counties who choose a set of services that they provide their localities, and we can no longer afford to do it.
“And we’re not. We’re going to stop.”
HARD TO RAISE TAXES
In return, Hunter’s plan assumes lawmakers will approve a local government wish list that would reduce rules surrounding auditing, collective bargaining and environmental permitting, while increasing governments’ authority to pass tax increases without having to win a public vote.
Among the new tax authority:
• The seven largest counties, including Pierce and Thurston, could raise the sales tax by a tenth of a cent and split the revenue with cities 55-to-45. Cities could impose the tax unilaterally if their counties don’t.
• Smaller counties could raise the sales tax by two tenths of a cent.
• A new local restaurant tax could gradually rise to 0.5 percent.
• An existing public-safety sales tax would no longer require a public vote.
• Counties could tax utilities at a 6 percent rate – likely passed onto ratepayers – for their service in unincorporated areas where utilities don’t pay taxes to a city.
Those taxes would be enough for many, maybe all, local governments to make up for the state cuts – if they pass them.
“Raising taxes locally is as difficult as it is raising taxes statewide,” said Victoria Lincoln, a lobbyist for the Association of Washington Cities.
Even if local governments manage to raise taxes, they may not generate much in some areas with small tax bases, said Scott Merriman, deputy director of the Washington Association of Counties. He said a tenth-of-a-percent sales tax hike would raise $50 million in King County but just $28,000 in Ferry County.
Cities and counties still struggling to pay for services after raising taxes could apply for a piece of $7.1 million in new state grants.
LIQUOR, CRIMINAL JUSTICE CUT
The House budget calls for permanently eliminating about $37 million a year in public-health programs starting in 2013. It fills part of that gap by diverting about $28 million a year in local governments’ liquor taxes to counties’ public health programs.
The plan also would grab $42 million in liquor profits that local governments would otherwise have expected to add under voter-approved privatization Initiative 1183.
The state would take away $80 million a year in other local distributions – mainly money for criminal justice – starting in 2013. And local police forces would have to pick up half the tab – or all of it, according to one summary of the plan – for training of cadets that the state now mostly covers.
Local governments say they have already felt the pain of previous state cuts, including reduced mental health services and supervision of paroled inmates.
Jordan Schrader: 360-786-1826 jordan.schrader@thenewstribune.com
Staff writer Brad Shannon contributed to this report.
