Susan Hutchison Announces Plan to Improve Public Safety with Sheriff Sue Rahr

10/14/2009

Today, I want to announce along with Sheriff Sue Rahr a series of initiatives that will save King County money, and use law enforcement resources more efficiently. These changes will to be implemented in the next budget year starting 2010, upon my election as the new King County Executive and approval by the King County Council. This announcement also commences a new spirit of cooperation between the Executive and the Sheriff, two important elected officials who pledge to work together during this difficult budget crisis so that the citizens of King County are better served.

Jail Management

Today, I am announcing my intent to turn over the management of the jails to the Sheriff’s office. This brings King County in line with the 38 other counties in the state which place responsibility for the jails under their sheriff’s offices.

For years, the County has had strained relations with the suburban cities which depend on the County to provide the regional jail services. As a result, a number of cities have formed their own governmental entity to build their own jail. This is not a wise use of public money and underscores the profound dysfunction of County government in its role of providing services to the region’s cities.

The cities don’t trust county government but they do trust the Sheriff. The King County Sheriff’s office has had great success contracting for police services for suburban cities. I want to take advantage of that success to promote contracting services between the Sheriff’s office and the municipalities that need their prisoners to be housed at the King County jail facilities. Furthermore, centralizing budget personnel, internal investigation, and human resources functions under the Sheriff’s office will result in additional savings.

This will not change the job description of the jail guards which will remain separate from the Sheriff’s Deputies functions and union representation.

Youth Violence Liaison

I am also announcing today the strengthening of gang policing in King County by creating a Regional Youth Violence Liaison position for coordinating the Sheriff’s office, Seattle Police and the suburban police departments. The Liaison would coordinate with all the police agencies to facilitate the exchange of gang information and statistics and track gang activity across King County, which is currently not done. Gang enforcement is fragmented between police agencies, but gang members don’t respect regional boundaries and have to be tracked throughout the region.

This position will be funded by streamlining the budget for the Executive’s security team which would free up money to fully fund the position.

Budget Transparency

I join with Sheriff Rahr today, calling for budget transparency. As we move forward to make difficult budget decisions in the coming year, I renew my call for a budget disclosure website that gives citizens, county employees and the media access to detailed budget analysis and statistics. Rather than merely posting the several-hundred page budget to the King County Website, this dynamic database will allow users to search by agency, program, expenditure, grant recipient, and a host of other search keywords.
The County claims that public safety will not be reduced in the proposed 2010 budget. I believe careful budget scrutiny shows otherwise. By misrepresenting a cost savings, to be five times greater than it actually is due to the annexation of North Highline by Burien, the current budget would result in the laying off of 27 more deputies – in addition to the 86 positions lost in the last year and a half.

This is not budget transparency.

With the new leadership that I will provide, along with Sheriff Rahr – we will make public safety, once again, the first priority of government as required by our state mandates which is what the citizens demand.

There will be a new spirit of collaboration between the executive and Sheriff’s office that has not been seen for years.