Let's be honest here. It's a zero-sum game. Any money used to subsidize PERFECTLY HEALTH PEOPLE to have highly subsidized transit services takes money out of the public health budgets. Just LOOK at the harm you are doing, by taking these dollars away from public health. I hope you can sleep nights! And LOCKE! Letting vital services die, while he gives ten times the money to subsidized bus service. Has he no heart???

Snohomish County agency seeks state aid to avoid eliminating 34 jobs

by Mekeisha Madden Seattle Times Snohomish County bureau The Snohomish Health District will have to eliminate the equivalent of 34 full-time jobs - 18 percent of its work force - unless the Legislature approves a budget amendment that would allow the district to recover money lost from post-Initiative 695 cuts.

Health-district officials said they hope that a proposed statewide $39.3 million allocation, recommended by Gov. Gary Locke, will help the public-health agency cope with the loss of $635,381 this year. The district adopted a budget-balancing plan last week that would make up lost funds by cutting jobs.

"We're optimistic that the Legislature will help us out," said Rick Mockler, health-district deputy administrator. "But we are also preparing ourselves for the worst."

The Legislature is aiming to adopt a budget by March 9.

The proposed allotment would make up 90 percent of the funding that health districts lost to reduced motor-vehicle excise taxes, said Mike Gowrylow, a spokesman for the governor's office. Initiative 695, approved by voters Nov. 2, slashed car-tab fees to a flat $30 a vehicle. Overall, the initiative is expected to reduce state revenues by $550 million a year.

Locke is proposing that $382 million from the state's $1.21 billion reserve fund be used to partly replace lost car-tab revenue for transit, public safety and local public-health districts. Of that, $39.3 million would be specifically for the state's health districts.

However, unless a plan to replace funds is approved by the Legislature, the Snohomish Health District will cut 14 of its 185 full-time jobs this summer and 20 more at the end of the year. That would ensure that even if the district did not receive assistance, it would have a balanced budget, district officials said.

The first round of job cuts - either outright elimination of positions or reduced hours - would add up to 14 full-time slots. They would include:

A reduction in hours for two communicable-disease investigators. The loss would result in fewer follow-up contacts with people who have been exposed to sexually transmitted diseases, according to the district.

Elimination of a First Steps social-worker position. Without it, 324 home visits to women with low incomes and high-risk pregnancies would not take place, the district said.

There no longer would be an injury-prevention health educator. The health district said it wouldn't be able to distribute more than 600 car seats and bike helmets or provide education on their use to low-income families.

Elimination of the tobacco-program health educator. That would mean loss of stop-smoking training and school-based anti-smoking efforts.

Several public-health nursing positions would face reduced hours, leading to a decline in home visits to low-income or high-risk families.

-- Mark Stilson (mark842@hotmail.com), January 18, 2000

Answers

First slugging through the false anguish so skillfully displayed by Mark, the Governor's suggested $33 million in funding for public health issues is 90% of the previous funding levels. In the next biennium the funding would be increased to $58 million ($4 million MORE than before the cuts made by 695.)

Yes, such a great tragedy. I guess those transit riders will just have to live with the guilt that the local health agencies will be receiving $4 million more than what they were expecting to receive due to them.

-- Patrick (patrick1142@yahoo.com), January 18, 2000.

"First slugging through the false anguish so skillfully displayed by Mark, the Governor's suggested $33 million in funding for public health issues is 90% of the previous funding levels. In the next biennium the funding would be increased to $58 million ($4 million MORE than before the cuts made by 695.) "

So why should the POOR, the SICK, the ADDICTED, and the other VICTIMS OF SOCIETY have to take a 10% cut so that DOT can build a park n ride for the impoverished car owners of Mercer Island. When some kid DIES of e. coli because they couldn't inspect Odwalla frequently enough, when BABIES don't get their immunizations, I'm sure you people speeding by on the HOV lane in your $400 thousand chauffered vehicles won't CARE.

I hope that selfish rich commuters like you can sleep nights, Patrick.

-- (mark842@hotmail.com), January 18, 2000.

Oh I sleep quite well at night. And for the umteenth millionth time, I don't use transit, nor am I particularly rich.

I'm sorry, I thought that everyone here was okay with such insignificant things like a 10% reduction in services. Again, your false sense of dread isn't very impressive.

A lot of those things like e-coli screenings and immunizations are scheduled to be cut ONLY if there isn't any refunding. About the only thing everyone in Olympia agrees on refunding is public health, so you can rest easy now Mark, no kids are going to die because transit was refunded at about a 60% level (that's the Governor's suggestion, it will probably be much lower than that).

But if you were REALLY concerned about health issues being underfunded, then maybe you should consider WHY they were defunded in the first place. Hmm, now why was that....

-- Patrick (patrick1142@yahoo.com), January 19, 2000.

Because all our tax money went to Transit Patrick!

-- Marsha (acorn_nut@hotmail.com), January 19, 2000.

"About the only thing everyone in Olympia agrees on refunding is public health, so you can rest easy now Mark, no kids are going to die because transit was refunded at about a 60% level (that's the Governor's suggestion, it will probably be much lower than that). "

But what COULD we be doing in public health, if we didn't spend the money on transit? King County is having a heroin epidemic. Record numbers of innocent victims are overdosing each year. We have proposed new methadone clinics but we need more, many more. And look at the needle exchange programs. AIDS is on the march again. And now it has moved from GWMs to people of COLOR. Selfish transit riders like you are spending money that's taking the new needles out of the arms of the poor heroin addicts of Seattle, and spreading AIDS. Then denying them methadone and AIDS treatment.

Why don't you paint a Confederate flag on those buses and have the horn play "Dixie," you homophobic racist self-centered freeloaders?

Transit rider, the new code-word for RACIST.

-- Mark Stilson (mark842@hotmail.com), January 19, 2000.

Mark "Candide" Stilson, obviously. But I do like Voltaire.

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another. Voltaire Dictionnaire Philosophique, 1764

-- (zowie@hotmail.com), January 19, 2000.