Sheriff backs sales tax increase
Spokane County Sheriff Mark Sterk endorsed a plan Wednesday to raise $6.5 million a year for mental health services by increasing the local sales tax by 0.1 percentage points.
Sterk, who plans to retire next year to become a minister, went so far as to say that he would urge Spokane County commissioners to enact the tax even if the Nov. 8 advisory vote fails to pass public muster.
“We have no other resources to plug these people into, and that’s just flat wrong,” Sterk said of the current situation.
Proposition 2 asks voters if they want the tax – 10 cents on every $100 purchase – for the next three years.
Commissioners don’t need voter approval, however, to raise the tax. State law allows the county to raise the tax to fund mental health and substance-abuse treatment.
Mental health providers say the tax money is necessary to help fill an estimated $7.5 million shortfall in mental health care funding caused in part by fewer federal Medicaid dollars.
“We don’t see any other way out,” said Spokane County Commissioner Mark Richard.
Sterk said he sees on a daily basis the effects of not treating the mentally ill, who occupy 20-30 percent of the beds in the Spokane County Jail.
“It impacts not only the jail, but our calls for service on the street,” he said. “My deputies and corrections officers are not mental health providers. We don’t know how to care for these people: We need help.”
The money won’t be enough to provide increased mental health services, but it will help keep mental health treatment at about current levels, and keep down costs to jails and local emergency rooms, said Spokane Valley Police Chief Cal Walker.
Treatment is less expensive than incarceration: Medicaid pays $113 per month for treatment versus the $85 per day it costs to house a prisoner in the county jail.
And that doesn’t include the ethical issues surrounding jailing the mentally ill, said Sterk, who described that approach as a throwback to the way the mentally ill were treated in the 1920s.
“My heart tells me these people do not belong in our jail,” he said of those suffering from mental illness.
Plus, freeing up jail beds and deputies’ time means more resources to fight criminals.
Sterk said that as a conservative Republican, he doesn’t often support new taxes.
Still, this isn’t the first tax issue Sterk has supported. Last year Sterk backed a 0.1 percent sales tax for criminal justice and public safety. He had hoped to use that money to upgrade the communications system used by police and fire departments, but local cities later refused to earmark their share of the money for that purpose.
As a state legislator, he opposed the initiative that ultimately killed Washington’s motor vehicle excise tax but also spoke out against raising the gas tax.