Pete’s pick

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

PETE’S PICK: In a move certain to please conservatives, Whatcom County Executive Pete Kremen decided in tandem last week to veto a portion of the county budget and to appoint retiring council member Ward Nelson to complete the term of Bob Kelly, who announced his early departure from council in November, on the same day that budget amendment was approved.

Kremen’s appointment of Nelson drew criticism from outgoing council members who’d sought to honor Kelly’s request that they replace him with a “likeminded” representative, but—as we’ve pointed out before—there was a pretty logic to Pete appointing Ward to finish out Bob’s term.

Nelson is a known factor, a person the council and administration know they can work with, and someone who will leave the District 1 seat open when the term expires in 2011. Equally significant—for good or ill, as council slides sharply to the right in supermajority—it shifts the mercurial Barbara Brenner from a position of central leadership on County Council to her more familiar and suited role as champion of the underrepresented view. This creates a council of veterans—in both policy and history—in majorities sufficient to get things done in 2010 and, hopefully, war-weary enough that they’re not eager to resurrect old biases (and grievances) to amend them again.

Kremen stressed his belief that not only is Nelson capable of a moderate, reasoned approach to government, he holds broad bipartisan support within the community. “Ward ran unopposed four years ago,” Kremen explains. “Before that, he received more than 70 percent of the vote when he ran in 2001. That says to me he has balanced community support.”

The appointment is a confident move by the executive, particularly in light of his (seldom used) veto powers… which this council is now in sufficient majority to override.

One hand can count the number of matters Pete Kremen has vetoed in his four terms in office; and a five-vote council override of his current veto is unlikely, with Nelson and Brenner having already voted in the minority in November against an amendment that would have added $250,000 to the budget of Whatcom County Superior Court while easing back the budgets of other county departments by 1 percent.

Complaining that the universal 1 percent cut comes on top of departmental budgets already reduced by millions of dollars as the county seeks to close a $4 million shortfall in its biennial budget, Kremen noted, “Decisions such as this penalize and demoralize the rest of the departments and offices in our organization.” He continued, “The message conveyed by this allocation is essentially to reward a department (Superior Court) that traditionally overspends its annual budget and needs to be supplemented at the end of every year. In 2008,” the executive noted, “the supplemented amount was $165,000.”

“I believe,” he concluded, “my office and the public needs to be more involved in a decision that effectively carves out only one branch of our government for targeted budget cuts.”

Kremen’s complaint about rising costs in Superior Court is an enduring one, the only county department that has failed consistently in recent years to offer a reduced budget for council’s consideration. That creates immediate downstream pressure on the budgets of prosecutors, public defenders, sheriff’s department personnel and others, Kremen explains. The lack of cost controls in Superior Court is exacerbated by the court’s failure in 2008 to apply for funds available from the Washington State Office of Public Defense. In fatter times, the Legislature had offered the court funds to assist low-income parents in hiring attorneys in juvenile dependency cases. While the governor later eliminated this OPD grant program, Whatcom County might have had the opportunity to receive nearly half a million dollars each year for the past three years.

“Our understanding from other counties that have received these funds is ‘all you had to do is ask’” for them, Kremen explains. “At this point that would have amounted to about a million and a half bucks of state money to help fund the court, so—yes—it does hurt. You add that to the $2.3 million in other expenditures the council has approved over the recommendations of the administration and there’s your $4 million deficit right there,” Kremen concludes.

“Council has for years been habitually authorizing expenditures for more than the levels recommended by the administration,” he explains. “The funding of Superior Court, while I understand their reasoning, is just another example of them spending money we don’t have.” The crisis, he says, arrives when on­going county expenses are offset by a patchwork of one-time or limited revenue sources.

Kremen believes county policies will stand with the new council.

“You’ll recall in my first years in office, I was able to work with a council much more extreme than this one,” he says. “I believe them to be much more moderate than perhaps the general public believes they are.

“Above all else, I really do want to bring the community together. We just went through a pretty divisive, polarized election and I want—not just with this appointment—to bring the community back to a place where we can have meaningful dialogue and make decisions that, while not unanimously accepted, are more widely accepted.”

On the other hand, Kremen notes, “I have made it clear to those currently on the council that I don’t want to see the good, important advances the council has made over the past decade unraveled. I am going to resist any significant effort to change the land use, the critical areas, the shoreline rules that have been put in place.

“I think,” he says, “we can get there with this new council.”

Let’s hope so, because Pete just threw away his brake.