[TRU Research] Cutting the cops

[Stephen DeSanto]

That is really interesting. Thank you for sharing!

On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 1:03 PM Katie Wilson <katie at transitriders.org> wrote:

> 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:
>
> —————
>
> 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
> .
>
> 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/
>
>   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.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.knkx.org/post/behind-political-grandstanding-shared-views-street-safety
>
>
>
> 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> 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>
> 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 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> 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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