Ron Sims fires $68M shot across King County's bow

June 10, 6:09 PMSeattle People ExaminerLaura Vecsey

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King County Executive Ron Sims was an early and ardent backer of Hillary Clinton in the National Democratic Presidential primary, which means we may be seeing Sims serve as King County Executive longer than he (or we) might have expected. With his work on global warming and his excellent reputation in DNC circles, people were talking about Ron Sims the way they used to talk about former Gov. Gary Locke. Like, big things on the national stage were ahead.

Well, let's re-script what might be going down. Barack Obama may indeed ask Sims to come to D.C. for some big-shot position, since bridging the gap between the Obama and Clinton campaigns will take cross-pollination.Sims, a Democratic party superdelegate, finally switched allegience to Obama last week, after the final primaries were contested in S. Dakota and Montana.

Or, maybe Sims will be too busy here at home to wonder what mighta, woulda, coulda been inside the Beltway.

King County is a monstrously huge land mass (bigger than Rhode Island) and more stuffed with people than Nebraska. It contains unincorporated areas that contain upwards of a 280,000 of its nearly 2 million  residents, which means all governmental services in those unincorporated areas must be rendered by the county.

Is it any wonder, then, that Sims came out last week and issued a budget shocker? King County is facing a $68 million shortfall, to which Sims has promised to attack by slashing $33 million from county's criminal justice system.

This is a big shot across the bow, the way we see it. Clearly Sims is spoiling for a showdown on several fronts as he rattles the cage of Seattle mayor Greg Nickels, who said the county can't lay all that law enforcement budget burden on the city. There are clearly structural and taxation and funding issues that will have to see major redress before these massive cuts are finally dealt with.

Who said our local politicians didn't know how to bare their teeth?

When someone suggested that Sims spent too much time and money on global warming initiatives, Sims shot back something like : That's ridiculous. That's just rhetoric. That amounts to about $100,000.

Sounds like he's rolling up his sleeves on this. We like it!