Urban subsidies

While the legislature is making sure that King County does its job in House Bill 1823 for prosecuting felons, maybe it should think about making sure that the county does its jobs with the right amount of money. The state property tax has two specific portions (one for county or regional government, and one for local government services.) In cities, these two portions of you property taxes are separated out and sent either to the county or to the city. In unincorporated county areas, both go to the county. In those unincorporated areas (of King County,) Rons Sims is in reality both the County Executive and the Mayor. The county provides local roads and police protection (which in the cities are provided by the local city government.) Since most of the urban unincorporated areas (e. g. North Highline/White Center/Boulevard Park) are that way because the local taxes revenues are insufficient to pay for all of the required services so the cities don't want to annex them, King County makes up the shortfall out of the portions of revenues from the county as a whole. This is generally called the urban subsidy and means that residents of the cities are paying for local services for the unincorporated areas.

This is one of the reasons that some Burien residents are not eager to annex portions (especially residential portions that have no sales tax base) of North Highline. The residents of North Highline that are annexed will lower the per capita revenue of Burien. In additon the infrastructure of North Highline is not as well maintained as that in the city of Burien so will take an intra-Burien subsidy to raise its standards for years.

A reason that North Highline residents might like to keep things as they are is that cities have ceratin other taxes that they are allowed to add to their residents' tax bills (e. g. utility taxes) that the county is not allowed to charge the residents of unincorporated county areas. As long as they stay unincorporated, they keep their tax bills lower and keep receiving the urban subsidy (but of course, they have little say in a county government gerrymandered to give Seattle a disproportionate vote.)

What is the answer? There probably isn't one that is desirable for all, but if the state would mandate that the county keep separate budgets for its local government rsponsibilities and its regional responsibilities, at least we might be able to figure out what they are up to.

As an example, I was disheartened to learn that King County has (only) two sets of Emergency Management Plans, one for the residents of unincorporated county and one for county government agencies. They have no plan for what services they plan to offer on a regional basis for all residents of the county, both in and outside of cities.