Washington and Coos county commissioners among many grappling with budget shortfalls

More than half of all counties in Oregon are facing budget shortfalls and cuts to programs and services. In Washington County, officials are proposing more than $25 million in reductions to the $2 billion budget that would include eliminating jobs and services.

In Coos County, the sheriff’s department released some of those serving time in its jail last year. In 2024, county voters turned down two different tax levies to fund government services. Even after making cuts, Coos County still faces a gap of about $1.8 million.

John Sweet is one of the three commissioners that govern Coos County. Kathryn Harrington is the chair of the Washington County Commission. They both join us to share more about the budget challenges and how they’re thinking about potential cuts to programs and services for their residents.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Right now, 21 of Oregon’s 36 counties are facing budget shortfalls and difficult decisions about which programs and services to cut. In Washington County, officials are proposing more than $25 million in reductions. That would mean the loss of more than 80 positions. We’ll talk with the Washington County chair about this in just a few minutes.

But we start on Oregon’s South Coast. In Coos County, the sheriff’s department already made deep cuts this year, but leaders face a nearly $2 million hole for the coming year. John Sweet is a Coos County commissioner. He joins me now. It’s great to have you on the show.

John Sweet: Thank you. Nice to be here, Dave.

Miller: What kinds of cuts did the county have to make that hit you this current year?

Sweet: Well, we tried to stay away from the sheriff’s department as much as possible, and so far I’ve been able to do that for the second round of cuts. As you indicated, we made a round of cuts in December, laying off 11 people in total, shutting down one half of our jail capacity, releasing 25 prisoners onto the streets. We thought the sheriff had done his share. So we try … we need to get about a $600,000 reduction in personnel costs to help offset the $1.8 million deficit. So this time around, we tried as hard as we could to avoid the sheriff and I think we’re gonna be able to do that, can’t guarantee that.

We cut positions in our assessor’s office. We cut positions in our juvenile department. We cut a position in victims assistance, crime victims assistance programs. We cut a position in our surveyor’s office. I don’t know if I got to five there or not, but we need to find one more cut to.

Miller: And if I’m not mistaken, with cuts after cuts from one year to the next, it can be a little bit hard to keep track of everything that’s happening. But you were talking about cuts from two different years. So correct me if I’m wrong here, but the sheriff’s department’s cuts, for example – reducing inmate capacity in half, from about 100 to about 50, laying off seven employees there, another four-and-a-half patrol positions – those are all cuts that have already happened. And then some of the other personnel cuts, those are ones that you are talking about very seriously right now for the coming year. Am I right about that?

Sweet: Some of them have already been made. All of them will have been made by the end of this fiscal year, which is June 30.

Miller: What are the reasons for this shortfall?

Sweet: I used to blame it largely on our low tax rate. We have a permanent tax rate, I think is about second or third lowest in the state. But I think there’s more to it than that. I worry that Measures 5 and 50, which reduced the rate at which property taxes can be increased, are going to hurt almost all local governments. Currently, the market value of all the property in our county is 67% higher than the value upon which taxes are assessed.

Miller: Because the assessment is pegged. It can’t rise now, for example, at the same rate as inflation?

Sweet: Yes, you’re right. The taxable value can be increased no more than 3% a year and it often has been less than that. Inflation hasn’t been too much greater than that or hadn’t been until just recently. The cost of food went up 20%. It hasn’t come back down. The increase is slowed, but it hasn’t dropped back down. So that reflects a big part of the cost of living, and of course we have to keep our staff up with the cost of living as best we can and other costs as well. It’s made it very difficult.

I would note that in the 30 years that we’ve been under the effects of Measures 5 and 50, frankly, as a citizen, I love it because my taxes are not as high on my home. But if you’re trying to run a public enterprise, it creates some problems.

Miller: And lawmakers know that too, obviously. I’m curious what you see politically? If you see a way to change the property tax system that would inevitably lead to higher property taxes for Oregonians? If you’re saying that is at the root of this, what do you see as a politically viable solution?

Sweet: Well, it’s a constitutional change that we made. So it’s hard to change the constitution. I can’t imagine there being much support for increasing property taxes across the state. Because it’s constitutional, it would require a vote of the people. I don’t see that as a possibility. We might be able to tweak Measures 5 and 50 around the edges. I didn’t realize until just recently that when I sold my house, that the buyer would inherit my taxable value which is already only 50% of the market value of my home. Now, that’s happened in 30 years, since we’ve been under [Measures] 5 and 50.

Miller: Are you suggesting a tweak where it would reset upon sale?

Sweet: Yes, you said it more succinctly than I. I don’t know whether that would be possible to get through, but it’s a tweak around the edges that we could make that would lessen the impact of this.

Miller: It would also, obviously, change the equation of overall housing affordability at a time when that’s another gigantic public policy issue.

I want to zero back into Coos County voters because we needn’t only talk about existing Measures 5 and 50, we can say what happens when voters there were given specific questions. In May and November of 2024, the question was, will you vote to increase your property taxes to pay for public safety, to pay for the jail, to pay for the sheriff’s department? And voters pretty overwhelmingly, twice last year in Coos County, said “no.” What do you make of that?

Sweet: Well, it was discouraging, that’s what I make of it. Some of the facts are, or one of them is that our economic base down here is a bit lower than the rest of the state. Our average household earnings are about 25% of the state average. And that has an impact upon people’s ability to pay property taxes. So it’s really hard to get a tax levy passed here.

Miller: I hope you don’t mind a more personal question before we say goodbye. I learned in prepping for our conversation that you are 85 years old. Why do you still want to be a county commissioner, especially when it involves now being one of the faces behind these painful cuts?

Sweet: Well, I guess I kind of like where I live. I think I have a reasonably good work ethic. I like being pertinent. I feel I can add something to the county’s governance. I got the energy to do it still … why not?

Miller: John Sweet, it was a pleasure talking with you. Thanks so much. Keep going.

Sweet: Thank you very much. Bye bye.

Miller: That’s John Sweet. He is a Coos County commissioner.

Kathryn Harrington is the chair of the Washington County Commission. She joins me now. It’s great to have you on the show.

Harrington: Thank you, Dave. I really appreciate being here.

Miller: I wanna start with what you just heard from John Sweet in Coos County. I wish people had seen … you made a heart sign against your chest in his last answer and you were nodding a lot when he was talking. But it’s worth pointing out stuff that you know really well, which is, there are gigantic differences between Coos County and Washington County. Your population is about 10 times greater than Coos County’s. Your budget is about 14 times greater, which I imagine is a factor of both the larger tax base, larger industrial base and the larger tax rate.

So those are the differences, but what do you see as the similarities?

Harrington: Well, thank you Dave, for the question. You know, counties are creations of the state. We were created to ensure that there are common services and common categories across each of the 36 counties in Oregon. How we deliver those services, of course, varies based upon the population, the demographics of our community. And of course, as you mentioned, our county economies are different by virtue of the shape of these counties, the land of these counties. Washington County, home to Nike World Headquarters, Intel Corporation, Lam Research, a lot of tech, but 80% of our acreage is rural.

Commissioner Sweet and I have worked together. One of our common areas is forestry, for example, but each of our counties has to provide public safety and justice; land use and transportation; housing, health and human services; and general government services all across the state. How we go about doing that needs to accommodate our particular circumstances, but the state expects us to have all the same things, like elections. But the number of cities is different between Coos County and Washington County. The number of taxing districts that our Washington County Assessment and Taxation Department has to deliver property tax bills for is different. There are 64 of them, over 200,000 property tax bills. That’s probably more people than live in Coos County.

Miller: There are 60,000 people in Coos County in total.

Harrington: Yep, yeah. But I can also relate to the low property tax rate. The property tax rate for Washington County is the lowest of our three metro area counties at just under $2.25. Multnomah County is almost double that. Clackamas County, which has a smaller population than Washington County, has an even larger property tax rate. Also, looking at the numbers because I’m a geek, the per capita tax rate of those three counties, Washington County is the lowest.

Miller: Can you give us a sense for the scale of the budget hole that you’re facing right now?

Harrington: [It’s] $20.5 million dollars, our fifth year of having to work … for our county administrator to work through cuts in order to deliver to us a balanced proposed budget for consideration

Miller: Five years in a row?

Harrington: Yes.

Miller: Before we get to how you’re approaching this year’s budget hole, what does it mean to be in the fifth year of reductions?

Harrington: It’s really hard. We’ve made all of the one-time changes that we possibly could, but we’ve also made improvements. Last year, really the theme was a tale of two counties, because on one hand we had to cut back on service delivery. We managed to avoid layoffs, so we still retained the staff, but we had to eliminate a lot of vacant positions. But we’ve also made improvements where we’re no longer using one-time funding for ongoing services, which had been done for decades in Washington County. We use that one-time funding for one-time purposes, like fixing buildings that have long, long been ignored. This is the year where we’re going to have to eliminate more vacant positions and we’re going to have to lay a certain number of people off.

Miller: A certain number of people … When I said 80 or so positions are going to be eliminated, how many of those are going to be actual layoffs, as opposed to not hiring open positions?

Harrington: There are just over 30 people that are affected. And it depends. If some people are departing due to other opportunities – which is a better situation, especially for me – when they stay in public service it’s really wonderful. For example, one of our layoffs in emergency management, in general government, found a like-position in another county. So it’s gonna be a big loss for us. We’re losing a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge that we really need. But we do have to make service cuts.

Miller: I want to turn to some of those specific ones. My understanding is about $7 million in cuts would hit public safety departments, meaning the DA’s office, the sheriff’s office and community corrections, which is parole and probation …

Harrington: And our community corrections center. We’re one of four counties in Oregon that operates a residential community corrections center.

Miller: So what specific impacts in those different departments can Washington County residents expect?

Harrington: Well, we’re having to eliminate vacant positions in our sheriff patrol. We’re also moving a service that the state has enabled counties to implement locally. It’s not a mandated service, it’s been an optional service for child victim services. To move that from county implementation back to the state is going to impact 19 different positions. But the state agency and department has been a great partner in being interested in taking that responsibility back over.

Miller: Will they be funded, though, to the same extent? Will the staffing be the same?

Harrington: They’re taking the 19 general positions. There are two assistant deputy district attorneys that are not part of that move.

Miller: My understanding … so, some of that is going to be lost?

Harrington: Yeah, we do have vacant ADA positions in the prosecution part of the district attorney department, but it will be those employees’ choice, what they want to do.

Miller: You’re also facing a roughly $16 million shortfall from the tax for homeless services. What is that going to mean for the county?

Harrington: Well, what you’re citing is the reduction in the personal income tax, business income tax for the Metro Supportive Housing Services program.

Miller: And the money from that Metro tax that flows to Washington County?

Harrington: That’s correct. We’ve known of this forecast for some time, so our staff have been working with our community-based partners. We’re trying to soften the blow. The most direct effect is we’re going to have to stop investing so much in preventing homelessness. Those immediate short-term eviction prevention measures are going to have to really draw down. So the situation may get worse, but we’ll see.

We’re also having to adjust the delivery of that. For example, hotel rooms are the highest cost and so less of that, but really leaning into ensuring that our congregate shelters are at maximum capacity.

Miller: I’m curious what you think of what John Sweet and I spent a lot of time talking about, the structural issues of the way property tax is limited, property tax increases are limited in Oregon? What do you see as a potential change to that?

Harrington: Well, as you and Commissioner Sweet discussed, I think it is important for the state to consider allowing the sales of homes to reset the assessed value. Because as his own personal experience noted, the real market value increases and increases and increases, but the assessed value has remained at this 3%. And the fact of the matter is, the cost of delivering these services … and we’re getting down to practically only delivering the mandated services, but the state doesn’t fully fund all those mandated services.

So there do need to be adjustments because, as you’ve noted, over 20 counties in Oregon have these funding shortfalls. And the League of Oregon Cities has noted the vast number of cities that are feeling the same effects. So we are not alone in feeling these funding gaps. But another aspect of things that could change – we have been working with our state legislators to make sure they will stop, please stop, passing new laws or regulations that create more unfunded or underfunded mandates. That would help a lot.

Miller: Let’s say that you make all the cuts that are proposed right now in the coming weeks. We’re talking about July 1 as the new fiscal year. What does the forecast look like for the following year? Are you imagining, are you assuming a sixth year in a row of cuts?

Harrington: Well, that’s a possibility. But we, as a county commission, talked about this, informed by a five-year forecast from our county administrator and our chief financial officer. And for the seventh year that I’ve been there, we have worked on board principles and board priorities to guide the staff in developing the proposed budget. So we asked, in looking at cuts for this year’s budget, please forecast for two years so that we won’t just be right back.

But it’s very concerning, given what’s happening at the federal and the state level. There’s such a reliance upon the funding to go along with these requirements. It’s a very scary time.

Miller: Kathryn Harrington, thanks very much.

Harrington: Thank you for having me, Dave.

Miller: Kathryn Harrington is the chair of the Washington County Commission.

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