Sheriff Sanders explains key differences in TCSO general fund, public safety tax fund

With potential budget cuts to Thurston County Sheriff’s Office looming — and other restrictions to numerous Thurston County agencies — Sheriff Derek Sanders spoke to an audience at the Yelm Community Center on the financial situation the agency is facing.

Additionally, Sanders cleared the air on any confusion for why TCSO might be forced to reduce its budget after voters in Thurston County passed the Proposition 1 public safety tax — which became effective on April 1, 2024.

“One of the areas that’s confusing for people is how the public safety tax is being figured into our budget problem,” Sanders said. “Most people are going, ‘we just voted for a tax, how are we broke? How do we not have any money?’ There’s two pots of money: the general fund, that’s where the county has to fund most of everything they do, and then there’s the public safety tax.”

He described TCSO as a complex organization because it receives funding from both of those counts — the general fund and the public safety tax fund. According to the sheriff, the general fund sits with a balance of roughly $31 million, before potential budget cuts. The public safety tax fund currently sits with a balance of $6.5 million.

“Some of the things we do with the public safety tax, without knowing that we would have a future budget problem, was we added 27 deputies,” Sanders said. “We added some support staff. We have deputies making more arrests, and you need more PDR people to redact body cam footage, process warrants and do those types of things. We added a couple supervisors. We obviously need to have correct supervision over our staff. And then we also bought that building.”

He added that TCSO has been in a “building crisis” forever, noting that patrol deputies are located in a Tumwater-based facility, while corrections deputies are based at a different Tumwater-based facility. Sanders and TCSO detectives work out of the court house, which is 50 years old.

“We got a pretty good bargain on that building,” he said. “$14 million for a facility that’s going to last 50 years. 56,000 square feet, and it gets everybody into one spot.”

Though his agency has been able to budget for 27 additional deputies due to the passing of Proposition 1, Sanders noted that 100 TCSO staff members still receive pay raises out of the general fund — and pointed at the rising costs of fuel and facility rent.

“All of these costs are still going up, which means the county has found itself in this position where it’s not like the public safety tax relieved every problem,” Sanders said. “It relieved getting more staffing. There was a huge problem. We never would have gotten where we are without it.”

The sheriff added that voters passed the Proposition 1 public safety tax with the intention that it would pay for new deputies, the purchase of a new building, and new resources for the agency to tap into. He reiterated that the recent passage of the tax is not to supplant existing TCSO staff.

“When you see the public safety tax and the general fund, you’ll hear people say ‘oh, they’re stealing that money.’ I can tell you the money in the public safety tax is healthy and safe,” Sanders said. “What I’m trying to do is safeguard that money and use what it was intended for.”

Sanders then verbally illustrated key differences in the federal government, the Washington state government, and county government — and how each of the three receive tax revenue.

“The best way to describe it is you’ve got your federal government, who I call big daddy. They got the most money. We pay them. All across the country, we pay a lot of federal taxes,” Sanders said. “Then, you got the state. That’s where most of our property taxes end up going. We pay a lot of property tax each month, and most of it goes to the state of Washington.

“And then you’ve got the county,” he continued. “The way I would describe the county is that they’re siphoning off pennies to help pay for local issues.”

Additionally, Sanders said counties across the state are finding themselves in what he described as a “structural deficit.”

“It’s essentially exactly what it sounds like. It means that no matter what you do, there’s nothing you can do to offset the fact that in 2030, 2035, you’ll run out of revenue without new revenue,” Sanders said. “Cities are unique. They are corporations. They’re not really responsible for a lot of the core constitutional requirements of government in a lot of ways. A good example of that is the assessor’s office — constitutionally mandated in our state laws. The sheriff — the county has to pay for it. The jail — the county has to pay for the felony jail. That includes when officers of a city bring a defendant in for a felony crime, it has to go to the county jail. The cities do not have to pay for that. They’re off the hook.”

According to Sanders, Thurston County does not receive any B&O taxes, nor any “special tax” within the district — and solely relies on property tax and sales tax.

“It’s just bones. They’re looking, they’re trying to cut bones off to make ends meet,” Sanders said. “The problem that we’re having is over time, it’s just continuously compounding. That’s where we are today. It doesn’t help that the state and federal government are at a civil war right now. I don’t think anybody asked for that, but here we are. That’s just the reality of what we’re dealing with in Washington state.”

The sheriff said he and TCSO will continue to be opportunistic when it comes to grants, or items deemed uncostly to the agency. Specifically, he mentioned that the agency had “a free helicopter delivered” but noted the program surrounding it is murky.

Sanders believes TCSO has a funding source for operations of the helicopter that wouldn’t impact the general fund. He highlighted the importance of having air support in the county by referencing a vehicular pursuit he had in the morning hours of Wednesday, Oct. 8, where a victim was “effectively” kidnapped by the driver.

“We asked the entire western half of Washington for air support, and there was none,” he said. “It gives you the idea of just how bleak things are when it comes to support for law enforcement, assets for law enforcement. For me, if I can get a free helicopter here and Northwest Helicopters is willing to fly it for free and maintain it for free — it seems like a pretty good bang for your buck for Thurston County.”