As the state legislature prepares for a special session to bridge a forecasted $2 billion in additional cuts since May’s $5 billion, the city of Sumner warns that certain potential state cuts could harm services to its more than 9,000 citizens. Staff wrote in a two-page letter to state legislators that the city budget has already cut “services and costs to the bone over the last five years,” and that further funding cuts from the state level would cut into city necessities.
The city cut more than $3.2 million out of its $16 million general fund budget in the 2009-2010 biennium, a reduction of 12.5 percent overall and 20 percent if applied to just the general fund, City Administrator Diane Supler said. Ten percent of staff positions remain vacant today, according to the notice.
“Some people talk about making cuts, but they’ll be cuts from planned increases to the budget,” Mayor Dave Enslow said in an interview. “We haven’t done that in Sumner. We’ve made actual cuts to our budget.”
The city identified one category of the state budget it wishes to change—sales tax on goods delivered out of town—and two where the status quo is desirable: liquor profit excise tax sharing, and law enforcement.
Washington state passed a “Streamlined Sales Tax” bill in 2008 that effectively changed local retail sales tax on delivered goods from an origin-based system to a destination-based one.
“Say you buy a couch from the Old Cannery Furniture Warehouse and have it delivered to Enumclaw,” Enslow said. “The sales tax on that purchase doesn’t go to Sumner, where the Old Cannery is. It goes to Enumclaw.”
That is a problem for Sumner, a home for more than a dozen businesses—including Amazon, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and REI—that live and die by their shipped goods.
The city argues that keeping those major employers and their 9,000 jobs will require a solid city infrastructure—strongly implied to be supported by sales tax.
State legislators were invited to tour business locations in the city’s industrial center.
The city letter briefly expressed a desire to maintain liquor excise tax sharing, claiming that the elimination of the entitlement would force a service reduction of $250,000 per biennium.
Perhaps the most was said about proposed state-level law enforcement reforms.
“Taken individually, each of these cuts negatively impacts your (legislators’) communities,” the letter read. “Taken together, they will reduce the City’s ability to provide necessary services. Employers and retailers only remain in a state with communities in which they feel that their employees and premises are safe.”
The letter argues that proposed early release and reduced supervision of certain offenders, if passed, will erode the safety of communities and provide less of a deterrent for potential criminals.
The city is also opposed to a proposal that would raise local police agencies’ share of Basic Law Enforcement Academy costs to 50 percent. The current share is 25 percent, said Greg Baxter, a records officer for the Washington state Criminal Justice Training Center.
“The cost of Basic Law Enforcement Academy is $15,000, making 50 percent of that $7,500,” Supler said. “In addition, we have $1,500 of other (training) expenses. If you’re a larger city, $7,500 is nothing. If you’re Tacoma, $7,500 is no big deal.
“We can manage the cost, but the smaller a community is, the more difficult it is to pay that share.”
Supler added that the larger share of training costs were especially a concern in cases where an officer quickly moves on to a larger agency.
“Our police department would be covering a larger cost of training an officer, only to have that officer transfer to a better-paying department,” she said. “Then we would have to fill that position again.”
