Budget trouble ahead

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This looks pretty serious.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011609373_kingbudget15m.html

And people wonder why we feel the need to carry.



Ralph Fasciatelli must be crapping his pants about now. Hmmmm, I wonder if he'll file for a CPL? I mean, who's going to answer his 911 call? How long will the wait time be? Will we be put on hold?

"We think every call is important. Please hold for the next available operator." **Muzak**"

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My apologies, guys and gals. Here's the text:

Budget trouble ahead, criminal-justice officials warn King County Council King County's ability to respond next year to emergency police calls, investigate crimes, and prosecute and supervise criminals is in jeopardy because of a budget shortfall, Sheriff Sue Rahr and other criminal-justice officials told a County Council budget committee Wednesday.

By Keith Ervin
Seattle Times staff reporter

King County's ability to respond next year to emergency police calls, investigate crimes, and prosecute and supervise criminals is in jeopardy because of budget shortfalls, top criminal-justice officials said Wednesday.

If the county made a 12 percent across-the-board cut — roughly the magnitude of the projected funding gap — 36 prosecutors would be laid off, leaving only two-thirds of the lawyers the office had two years ago, Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg told a Metropolitan King County Council budget committee.

"Justice in King County will be unrecognizable if we take this kind of cut," he said.
Such cuts would likely lead to dismissing criminal cases, he said, because of delays, and felony suspects would be released if prosecutors couldn't meet a 72-hour deadline for filing charges.

Satterberg, Sheriff Sue Rahr, District Court Presiding Judge Barbara Linde and Superior Court Presiding Judge Bruce Hilyer told council members how they would handle 12 percent cuts to their spending power.

The four suggested earlier this year that voters be asked to approve a sales-tax increase of up to three-tenths of a penny to fund criminal justice, public health and human services. They set the idea aside while the Legislature considered, then rejected, a statewide sales-tax increase.

County Executive Dow Constantine last month said a tax hike shouldn't be put before voters until the county can show progress in holding spending to the rate of inflation. Constantine hasn't yet said how deeply he might propose cutting the budget.
Budget Director Dwight Dively said the county projects a drop of $50 million to $60 million — or 10 to 15 percent — in the revenue required to keep general-fund operations at current levels.

Last year, facing a $56 million gap, Executive Kurt Triplett's budget office considered 11 percent across-the-board cuts, but minimized the impact to justice agencies, in part by cutting human services, animal control and an annexation incentive fund.
On the possibility of higher taxes, Dively said, "Everything is under consideration. We mean it: everything from all cuts to potential ballot measures. They could be sooner, they could be later, they could be this year, they could be later."

The criminal-justice leaders didn't discuss a tax hike, but strengthened the hand of council members hoping for a ballot measure.

Rahr said a 12 percent cut would force layoffs of 70 of the 370 deputies and supervisors who provide police protection outside cities.

"I cannot further cut and continue to promise 340,000 citizens in unincorporated King County that they will have a reasonable response when they dial 911," she said. Rahr added that she'd close storefront offices, halt participation in regional task forces and end investigations of burglaries and drug crimes.

Hilyer said Superior Court would have to close Family Court Services, reduce juvenile probation counseling, and cut special advocates for children. Linde said District Court, for instance, would end probation services.

County Council members Reagan Dunn, Kathy Lambert and Julia Patterson said they were open to a tax increase.

Budget Committee Chair Patterson said she'd consider putting a tax on the ballot only with support from "the entire government. ... We would need to be implored by the executive branch and the separately electeds before we would do that."

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105.

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Justice in King County will be unrecognizable if we take this kind of cut," he said.

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That doesn't necessarily have to be true (when referring to cuts in law enforcement), so I disagree. WA being a CPL friendly state, a mostly (D) legislature which refused (and continues to refuse) to pass 6396 (Kline's AWB bill), and statewide preemption. I would rather see the money go in people's pockets & in return, put them on patrol. Am I naive?

If this were CA, then you wouldn't need cuts for justice to not only be unrecognizable, but more criminal friendly.

Erik.

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One proposal on the table is ending drug crime investigations. That's a great start, considering these are victimless crimes in the first place. And the task forces referred to are probably drug task forces where local LEOs are essentially enrolled into the DEA and used to conduct lengthy, expensive investigations into marijuana grows. Society gets a very poor return on their investment from this sort of over-reaching police work.

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Good info Bookman. Some of those figures are unbelievable.

Citizen patrol and policing ourselves is more in line with how things were set up originally.

I can't stand it when I hear "Don't take the law into your hands", we are the law.

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Interesting that you aren't reading front page stories about how some useless art program is going to be cut. This is how governments scare people into raising taxes. They cut necessities like police and fire, never the pet projects that no one would miss.

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heresolong wrote:

Interesting that you aren't reading front page stories about how some useless art program is going to be cut. This is how governments scare people into raising taxes. They cut necessities like police and fire, never the pet projects that no one would miss.

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Tru dat, but they are looking into cutting P.E. you know because knowing how to splatter paint on paper is better than your physical health.

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Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
Thomas Jefferson 3rd president of US (1743 - 1826)

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My apologies, guys and gals.

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Actually you owe us (and more importantly, the Times) an apology for your 2nd post, where you copied their entire story. There's nothing "fair use" about that!

In fact the Times makes it very easy for you: there's a nice 3-line abstract right under the title and above the byline:
Surely that's enought to help folks here decide whether or not they want to click on the link.

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kparker,

I posted the entire story because I've seen too many complaints on here about people not posting the text. The link was for the cite.

Now sit down and pop another cold one, okay?

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Bookman,

I don't care how many people complain; do the right thing and respect the Times' copyright.

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I did. I gave full credit.

ETA: If you have anything else to say to me take it to PM, okay?

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olypendrew wrote:

One proposal on the table is ending drug crime investigations. That's a great start, considering these are victimless crimes in the first place. And the task forces referred to are probably drug task forces where local LEOs are essentially enrolled into the DEA and used to conduct lengthy, expensive investigations into marijuana grows. Society gets a very poor return on their investment from this sort of over-reaching police work.

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+1 I missed that post earlier.

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Bookman,

I'd rather not take this to PM as I think it's valuable for others to see, too.

You seem to have a somewhat partial understanding of copyright, and you have plenty of company in this. At least your protestation here ("I did [respect the Times' copyright]. I gave full credit") makes it sounds like you think copyright means "you must attribute anything you copy to the original author".

But this is not correct. What copyright actually means is that the original author, or someone to whom the original author has assigned the rights, has full rights to control whether anyone copies his work or not, with certain limited exceptions as spelled out in the US Code.

In other words, you're breaking the copyright by reproducing the entire work here in full, whether or not you provide an accurate attribution of the authorship, unless you have the prior explicit permission of the copyright holder.

One of the exceptions to requiring explicit permission is the concept of "fair use". While fair use is somewhat nebulous (meaning that it's yet another chapter in the Lawyers' Full Employment Act), certainly a brief excerpt of an article that accompanies a link to it will qualify.

To summarize: we should link all we want, and by all means include an excerpt or an abstract--a line or two that shows what the linked-to item is all about, but please let's refrain from violating others' copyright by reproducing entire works here (unless they're already genuinely in the public domain.)

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In this case, linking of online articles is still an undecided issue in the courts.

http://www.templetons.com/brad/linkright.html

However, notice on the Times page the explicitly have a "share" and and "email" link on the page.

In general you should post the link and perhaps the first paragraph. Allthough is no great amount of case law on this yet, this is what is generally accepted at this time. IANAL

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kparker wrote:

you're breaking the copyright by reproducing the entire work here in full, whether or not you provide an accurate attribution of the authorship, unless you have the prior explicit permission of the copyright holder.

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OK, you asked for it I left out "that" at the end of the article which technically makes it an incomplete article:

Thursday, April 15, 2010 - Page updated at 12:31 AM

Permission to reprint or copy this article or photo, other than personal use, must be obtained from The Seattle Times. Call 206-464-3113 or e-mail resale@seattletimes.com with your request.


Budget trouble ahead, criminal-justice officials warn King County Council
By Keith Ervin

Seattle Times staff reporter


King County's ability to respond next year to emergency police calls, investigate crimes, and prosecute and supervise criminals is in jeopardy because of budget shortfalls, top criminal-justice officials said Wednesday.

If the county made a 12 percent across-the-board cut — roughly the magnitude of the projected funding gap — 36 prosecutors would be laid off, leaving only two-thirds of the lawyers the office had two years ago, Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg told a Metropolitan King County Council budget committee.

"Justice in King County will be unrecognizable if we take this kind of cut," he said.

Such cuts would likely lead to dismissing criminal cases, he said, because of delays, and felony suspects would be released if prosecutors couldn't meet a 72-hour deadline for filing charges.

Satterberg, Sheriff Sue Rahr, District Court Presiding Judge Barbara Linde and Superior Court Presiding Judge Bruce Hilyer told council members how they would handle 12 percent cuts to their spending power.

The four suggested earlier this year that voters be asked to approve a sales-tax increase of up to three-tenths of a penny to fund criminal justice, public health and human services. They set the idea aside while the Legislature considered, then rejected, a statewide sales-tax increase.

County Executive Dow Constantine last month said a tax hike shouldn't be put before voters until the county can show progress in holding spending to the rate of inflation. Constantine hasn't yet said how deeply he might propose cutting the budget.

Budget Director Dwight Dively said the county projects a drop of $50 million to $60 million — or 10 to 15 percent — in the revenue required to keep general-fund operations at current levels.

Last year, facing a $56 million gap, Executive Kurt Triplett's budget office considered 11 percent across-the-board cuts, but minimized the impact to justice agencies, in part by cutting human services, animal control and an annexation incentive fund.

On the possibility of higher taxes, Dively said, "Everything is under consideration. We mean it: everything from all cuts to potential ballot measures. They could be sooner, they could be later, they could be this year, they could be later."

The criminal-justice leaders didn't discuss a tax hike, but strengthened the hand of council members hoping for a ballot measure.

Rahr said a 12 percent cut would force layoffs of 70 of the 370 deputies and supervisors who provide police protection outside cities.

"I cannot further cut and continue to promise 340,000 citizens in unincorporated King County that they will have a reasonable response when they dial 911," she said.

Rahr added that she'd close storefront offices, halt participation in regional task forces and end investigations of burglaries and drug crimes.

Hilyer said Superior Court would have to close Family Court Services, reduce juvenile probation counseling, and cut special advocates for children. Linde said District Court, for instance, would end probation services.

County Councilmembers Reagan Dunn, Kathy Lambert and Julia Patterson said they were open to a tax increase.

Budget Committee Chair Patterson said she'd consider putting a tax on the ballot only with support from "the entire government. ... We would need to be implored by the executive branch and the separately electeds before we would do (remainder of article withheld. Refer to link for complete article http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2011609373&zsection_id=2003925728&slug=kingbudget15m&date=20100414)."

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105.


Copyright © The Seattle Times Company

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I am aware that there is a news agency that has their attorneys draft and sent out a letter to a prominent forum to cease and desist on this issue of copyright infringement to correct their post to show a paragraph or two and then post a link to their page for the full article.

This is not much to asked and I feel should be complied with by the members as the owners of the forums if action is taken will be upon their shoulders.

It does amaze me that there are those who are upset when asked or told to leave businesses and yet when they infringe upon another's rights it does not seem to matter so much.

If there are those on here to lazy to click on a link then that is there problem and need to stop wanting everything handed to them on a silver platter.

There would be nothing wrong with posting this article as seen below

Budget trouble ahead, criminal-justice officials warn King County Council
By Keith Ervin Seattle Times staff reporter

King County's ability to respond next year to emergency police calls, investigate crimes, and prosecute and supervise criminals is in jeopardy because of budget shortfalls, top criminal-justice officials said Wednesday.

If the county made a 12 percent across-the-board cut” roughly the magnitude of the projected funding gap” 36 prosecutors would be laid off, leaving only two-thirds of the lawyers the office had two years ago, Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg told a Metropolitan King County Council budget committee. "Justice in King County will be unrecognizable if we take this kind of cut," he said.

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Full Story

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Oh I forgot to mention, Flame On, Where are my trolls? See my glasses They Are Flame Retardant, NOW THAT IS FUNNY !

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BigDave wrote:

Oh I forgot to mention, Flame On, Where are my trolls? See my glasses They Are Flame Retardant, NOW THAT IS FUNNY !

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Nice shades.

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Sylvia Plath wrote:

BigDave wrote:

Oh I forgot to mention, Flame On, Where are my trolls? See my glasses They Are Flame Retardant, NOW THAT IS FUNNY !

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Nice shades.

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Thank You Sylvia I rather like them!