Budget Cuts Reduce Ecology Policing

State regulators say their softened approach to enforcing pollution law is a strategic choice. But they concede they’ve also been hobbled by a hostile, budget-slashing Legislature.

Environmentalists and some lawmakers go further, contending that the Legislature has used its purse strings in recent years to force the Department of Ecology to go easy on business and industrial polluters.

Republican legislative leaders and business spokesmen, who have sharply criticized the department as punitive and destructive, scoff at the assertion. They say lawmakers are working to shape a leaner, more balanced department willing to work with polluters rather than “harass” them.

One thing is clear: The big decline in penalties the past few years coincides with deep budget cuts and often heated words from lawmakers.

Legislative budget records show that in fiscal 1993, Ecology spent a total of $123.26 million and had 1,632 employees. Three years later, spending had been cut by more than 10 percent, to $110.4 million, and the employee roster had been reduced by about 15.5 percent, or 252 workers.

An Associated Press analysis of the department’s enforcement records since 1990 found the number of penalties declined by about 22 percent in three years, while the monetary value of fines fell 67 percent.

Ecology Director Mary Riveland says those declines are largely by design.

“We’d rather work with companies to get them to change their ways than hit them with penalties,” she said.

But she acknowledged the budget cuts have had an impact.

‘This is especially true in our water-resources program. We went from a staff of 54 to just 19 people,” Riveland said. “We don’t have people on the ground to get water permits processed and issued, which means we’ve had to pull people from (pollution-law) enforcement to get permit decisions made.”

House Speaker Clyde Ballard, R-East Wenatchee, says lawmakers in 1994 looked at how regulators were affecting business in Washington. They concluded Ecology was too fat and began pushing for budget cuts.

“They have the people to do the job. They just don’t have the people to go out there and harass and intimidate hard-working taxpayers,” he said.

“There is still a lot of unhappiness and anger out there at Ecology,” Ballard said, adding that he and his colleagues will seek changes to make the agency “more responsive to our citizens.”

That effort will lead not only to less spending, but to passage of restrictive legislation similar to the 1995 measure that requires Ecology inspectors to warn companies about violations on the first visit, rather than fine them, he said.