County consolidation gets another look

First came really bad news about the budget. Then, on Wednesday, Spokane County officials brought up a word that historically has sparked the equivalent of a jurisdictional cage match: consolidation.

County CEO Marshall Farnell said 2009 sales tax revenue could come up about $680,000 short of expectations and investment income could be down by about $690,000. He based those numbers on January’s numbers, projected through the year.

Farnell told department heads and elected officials they shouldn’t hire anyone. And if the local economy doesn’t turn around by June, he said, the county could be looking at major budget cuts and layoffs in 2010.

“We are not immune to everything that is going on in the world,” Farnell said. “One of the ways we are looking to do things differently is consolidation with the city of Spokane.”

Farnell said he would meet today with a representative of the city’s planning department to talk about “what we can do relative to planning and building.” He added, “I don’t know where that’s going to go.”

County leaders are contemplating whether to ask voters to approve plans to build a $245 million jail. The city of Spokane is asking voters for $18.5 million in property tax to pay for a new police property evidence building and other smaller projects.

“It seems to me that we keep taking off little pieces of this pie,” said Spokane County Commissioner Mark Richard. “We ought to be talking about metropolitan government first of all. If not the entire nugget, we should at least talk about a metropolitan police force.

“I have to imagine that the general public is out there scratching their heads going, ‘Why are you operating in different silos?’ ”

Since Spokane Valley incorporated in 2003, duplication of governmental functions has expanded, Farnell said.

“We have three of everything. If you left every employee the way they are and just eliminated the duplication of the three governments, starting with the chiefs of staffs, you would save millions,” he said Wednesday.

Spokane Valley Mayor Richard Munson said he’d need to know more about any consolidation plan before endorsing the idea.

“We can look at all kinds of things as far as consolidation from fire, library, police and roads. There’s a whole litany of things that can be talked about,” Munson said. “But I don’t want to say things that raise people’s expectations – negative or positive – until we have a chance to sit down.”

Spokane Mayor Mary Verner could not be reached Wednesday for comment.

County and Spokane Valley officials already planned to meet Monday to talk about services the Valley pays the county to perform. “That could be a place where we start talking about it,” Munson said.

Consolidation discussions date back about 45 years. The last serious attempt came in 1992, when 25 “freeholders,” elected just for that purpose, worked for 30 months to write a charter, or blueprint, for how a combined local government would look. But voters shot down the effort in November 1995.

County Treasurer Skip Chilberg noted that despite problems surrounding politics, control, ownership and quality of services, consolidation may be the only way for local governments to find efficiencies.

“This financial crunch might very well stimulate a lot of that discussion,” he said. “That may be the only way you get there is by necessity.”