[TRU Research] Cutting the cops

Sun Jun 7 13:03:32 PDT 2020

I’ve been talking with Mike McGinn who says he really thought they didn’t cut human services under his watch, so I did a little more digging in the pdfs and I think I just got to the bottom of the dip from 2011 to 2012, as explained here <https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/FinanceDepartment/12adoptedbudget/HealthHumanServices_2012AdoptedBudget_000.pdf>:

"While the 2012 Adopted Budget preserves and increases General Fund support for HSD, the Department is experiencing reductions in State and Federal funding. The 2012 Adopted Budget recognizes impacts from changes in State funding in the Aging and Disability Services Division. Beginning in October 2011, pass-through funding for home care program health plan reimbursements is redirected to home care agencies and is no longer administered by HSD, resulting in a significant budget reduction to HSD but no impact on direct services, as it was a change to the method of payment.

Looks like this is around $26m, so that accounts for most of the decrease.

There were massive cuts to human services around those years, but they were county/state/federal cuts rather than city of Seattle.

I still don’t understand why the openbudget site numbers don’t match up with the pdfs better, but I’ve sent some emails to inquire & will hopefully get answers soon.

McGinn had some interesting comments on all this stuff— sharing here in case anyone else finds them interesting:

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Human services - I mentioned cuts at the state and federal level, but there were also cuts at the county level.  It went from 20m to 0 over two years.  https://www.kingcounty.gov/elected/executive/constantine/news/release/2010/September/21HumanServicesCuts.aspx <https://www.kingcounty.gov/elected/executive/constantine/news/release/2010/September/21HumanServicesCuts.aspx>.

I also remember thinking that the human services folks would be more concerned with our very modest cuts in 2010-11, but my chief of staff pointed out that they were getting gutted at every other level. We looked great by comparison. $1.2b eliminated at state level. https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2010/dec/15/gregoire-budget-slashes-social-programs-schools/ <https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2010/dec/15/gregoire-budget-slashes-social-programs-schools/>

  I think its fair to say that human services were not usually perceived then as a city responsibility.  I remember other mayors around the country being surprised and impressed by how much Seattle put into human services.  We were something of an outlier, along with other big cities. As other levels of government have retreated from human services, we take it as more of a given that cities should step up. But at least during my term, I think part of the business opposition was “that’s not the city’s job”, in addition to their general hostility to such spending.  That we were causing a competitive disadvantage.  You can see that in Durkan calling for a regional response to homelessness, and Murray declaring an emergency in the hope that it would spur federal spending. It would of course be really helpful to have more resources from other levels, but it is anchored some in the sense that cities are not the right level for human services responses. Murray had to change his tune, as did Durkan in the face of reality and public pressure, and we now see more leadership in the city for a growing human services budget. 

Just adding some historical context about the relative role of city spending over time, and why the retreat from other places would have such an effect on us then and now.

As for how the establishment beats the drum for more cops and more enforcement, here’s a selection of articles.  

https://www.seattlepi.com/local/connelly/article/Burgess-makes-his-move-on-Seattle-crime-882989.php <https://www.seattlepi.com/local/connelly/article/Burgess-makes-his-move-on-Seattle-crime-882989.php>

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-city-council-scolds-mayor-mcginn-for-delaying-police-hires/ <https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/seattle-city-council-scolds-mayor-mcginn-for-delaying-police-hires/>.  As I reread my comments, I can see how frustrated I was.  In fact they knew about my plans because I briefed Burgess, the public safety chair.  Notably, they did not restore the officers when I sent down the budget later that year for their approval.

Public safety was a big issue in 2013 race, and ‘more cops’ became shorthand for more safety.  Almost always does. This article from the stranger is a good summary of how public safety was turned into a crisis in 2013 as a wedge issue for the election. As soon as Ed was in, they turned off the noise machine for a while (as crime went up in 2014 over 2013 ) and he ultimately promised 200 new cops. While kicking out the reformers, appointing a SPOG choice as interim, and reducing discipline. But that’s another story.

https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/crime-is-not-actually-spiking-downtown/Content?oid=17715269 <https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/crime-is-not-actually-spiking-downtown/Content?oid=17715269>

https://www.knkx.org/post/behind-political-grandstanding-shared-views-street-safety <https://www.knkx.org/post/behind-political-grandstanding-shared-views-street-safety> 

https://mynorthwest.com/186076/mayor-ed-murray-seattle-will-hire-200-more-police-officers/? <https://mynorthwest.com/186076/mayor-ed-murray-seattle-will-hire-200-more-police-officers/?>

> On Jun 7, 2020, at 11:15 AM, Katie Wilson <katie at transitriders.org> wrote:
> 
> Interesting, thank you. I will add this to our questions. I’ll work on getting answers tomorrow.
> 
>> On Jun 7, 2020, at 11:07 AM, Stephen DeSanto <rachidian at gmail.com <mailto:rachidian at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Looking just now, very slight discrepancies for housing (few $100k) and human services ($4M), pretty big difference for police ($398M 2019 in the PDF <https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/FinanceDepartment/19adoptedbudget/SPD.pdf> vs $363M 2019 in OpenData <https://data.seattle.gov/Finance/Approved-Budget-by-Department-over-Time/453y-h2ti>). Maybe there's some budgeting nuance I just don't understand -- definitely not a municipal finance expert -- but, like, the 2018 numbers match exactly between sources.
>> 
>> On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 10:59 AM Katie Wilson <katie at transitriders.org <mailto:katie at transitriders.org>> wrote:
>> You are probably correct, but I don’t understand why they would have “old” or otherwise incorrect data in there. I have emailed Open.Data at seattle.gov <mailto:Open.Data at seattle.gov> to ask for a clarification, and I’m asking a couple of councilmembers too. Hopefully we can get an answer Monday or Tuesday. It’s annoying because the graphs are great for telling stories but we need correct numbers, too! Did you happen to check whether the 2019 numbers match between the pdf and the opendata site? If it’s all good up to 2019, in a pinch we can just make graphs that end in that year and tell a fine story.
>> 
>>> On Jun 7, 2020, at 10:55 AM, Stephen DeSanto <rachidian at gmail.com <mailto:rachidian at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> That's a very good question. Now that you mention it, there's discrepancies between the "adopted budget" for the Office of Housing, too: The OpenBudget <https://openbudget.seattle.gov/#!/year/2020/operating/0/department/Housing/0/service?vis=lineChart> data (the cool charts) put 2020's "approved budget" at $69M, but looking at the PDF for the "adopted" budget <https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/FinanceDepartment/20adoptedbudget/OH.pdf>, that might not include over $70m in proceeds from the Mercer sale and has the budget at $130M for 2020. When I looked at some of the data for past years, OpenBudget numbers match the PDF versions exactly. So, my assumption here is that OpenBudget's data for 2020 might be a little old, and the PDF versions are more likely to be correct?
>> 
> 
> 

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