Todd Herman’s simple solution to save King County rescue services: slice salaries

King County Council officials say they’ve spent years making cuts to the budgetary bone and yet the county’s air rescue and marine dive unit might still go unfunded. KTTH’s Todd Herman says he found multiple easy places to cut within five minutes of searching through the budget.

KIRO 7 reported on an email sent by Glenn Wallace, President of the King County Search and Rescue Association, to search and rescue volunteers on April 11 that says King County plans to address its $50 million budgetary shortfall by completely defunding the Air Support Unit and Marine Rescue Dive Unit starting January 2017.

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KIRO 7 quoted King County Executive Dow Constantine as saying “There are no specific cuts on the table yet, but the fact is there’s not enough money to do next year what we were able to do this year.”

So Herman decided to help the county out.

While the council noted that tough choices were made for cuts to criminal justice, transit and public health, Herman noticed had one striking omission: personnel payment, salary structure and benefits.

“Just a mere looking at the budget will tell you I don’t think there are a lot of tough choices made there,” he said. “I’m looking right now at the payments. If we’re looking for a replacement of our emergency services, I can tell you right now a 5 percent pay cut accomplishes that.”

For those who think that’s unfair, he mentions some of the salaries from 2015: the jail health physician makes $234,912, plus $54,872 in overtime; Constantine makes $222,139 per year.

“I can continue on through the list,” he said. “Option one is a five percent pay cut across the board. Inhuman? No, real companies do this all the time. Want to know the first to do it? Small businesses, where the business owner takes the pay cut. Or startups – people like me who start businesses in our garage. We will spend a year or more not paying ourselves but paying other people.”

Herman said the second option is cutting the recently launched 12-week parental leave for all county employees back to eight weeks.

No. 3, do more to control labor costs by no longer signing contracts with 2-6 percent cost of living raises.

“People deserve to be paid well, if they’re doing well,” he said. “Is King County doing well?”

The last major issue Herman found is that the county didn’t actually make any “tough choices” in transit, which is in its own non-discretionary budget that can’t be cut.

“Item No. 4, we’re changing that: Metro transit goes into the general fund,” he said. “… I’m nobody’s financial genius but I am someone who has had to make tough business choices and that’s one of the ways that it’s done.”

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