Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

King County Council conflicted over morality

The King County Council has to get its priorities straight. Either they want to do what is morally right or they want a regional transit-tax package. This should be a no-brainer, but not to a group that has yet to see a transit-tax they didn't like...

Someone booked into the King County Jail on a criminal charge or a conviction will likely stay there an average of nine to 35 days.

If the alleged offender is mentally ill, the stay will typically stretch to 158 days, more than five months.

Those numbers, recently presented by jail director Reed Holtgeerts to the Metropolitan King County Council, have helped galvanize an effort to get more mentally ill inmates out of jail and into treatment.

The council is studying whether to increase the sales tax by one-tenth of 1 percentage point to provide treatment and housing for people who are mentally ill or addicted to alcohol or drugs, and to expand therapeutic courts such as Drug Court and Mental Health Court. The tax would raise about $50 million a year.

"In terms of problems that exist and just are not acceptable, this one is at or near the top of the list," said County Councilman Bob Ferguson, D-Seattle. He called it "a moral wrong" to use the jail to "warehouse" people who are mentally ill.

If the council takes action, the sales tax, which will be 8.9 cents next year in most parts of the county, will go to 9 cents on a $1 purchase. The money would primarily help people who are homeless and are frequent inmates of the jail and frequent patients in the Harborview Medical Center emergency room.

Although council members generally support the idea of providing more housing and treatment, they also are concerned that raising the sales tax could hurt chances for voter approval of a regional-highway and transit-tax package next year.

There you have it. The King County Council wants still more money above and beyond what is already being extorted from taxpayers to fund Metro transit options. They are so wedded to a transit system that only provides rides for less than 10 percent of travellers in King County that they're conflicted over whether they should do something about a "moral wrong" that they can clearly see.

It seems to me that if you've identified a "moral wrong" as councilman Ferguson has done that it should be your priority to correct it. The way the Seattle Times article reads though, the council will allow that moral wrong to go uncorrected in order to inflict another moral wrong on the over 90 percent of daily users of King County roads.

We don't need another transit package funded by the majority for the benefit of the minority. We do need to get people into treatment that need it, and to reduce overcrowding in our Jails so that true criminals aren't released early.

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