Rising salaries plus cap on tax increases troubles governments

It can't go on like this forever.

If you include benefits, public payrolls regularly grow by 5 percent every year. But a state ballot initiative passed in 2001 caps basic property tax revenue at 1 percent annually.

That's a formula for trouble.

Public employees' salaries and property tax levels are on a "collision course," Seattle-area anti-tax activist Tim Eyman said in an interview last week.

Everyone from Eyman to Clark County Administrator Bill Barron to Vancouver Police Guild President Ryan Martin say the same thing: sooner or later, something's got to give.

For some governments, it already has.

"I think about it every day," Barron said.

Barron doesn't expect a cataclysm. But he doesn't expect voters to suddenly embrace higher taxes, either.

Nor does Barron, who at $170,000 a year is the 11th-highest-paid public employee in Clark County, expect unionized public workers to give up regular raises.

"I see it as a cost of doing business," Barron said.

In order to keep raising public salaries without raising taxes, Barron predicts local governments will take another angle: sharing services with each other.

Governments would sacrifice independence, but save money.

It's already happening around the edges. In 1997, the county and Vancouver combined their parks departments. They also share a few police services, like crime records, the jail and the SWAT team.

The cities of Ridgefield, La Center and Battle Ground have spent the past two years talking about going in together on a sewer system.

Martin, the Vancouver Police Guild president, said the same thing as Barron: the future of local government reform is likely to include consolidation.

If consolidation saves money, Eyman said, he's for it, too.

"The public ought to at least consider that as a viable option," Martin said. "If we're looking at ways to cut costs and create efficiency."

— Michael Andersen