“If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad, he should see how bad it is with representation.” – Farmer’s Almanac.

The writer of this quote must have lived in Spokane County, where our commissioners have actively promoted new sales and property taxes to offset their self-inflicted budget woes and reckless spending.

On Nov. 8, voters will be asked to plug another hole in the wish list of county and city leaders: a new Spokane County regional animal control facility. Commissioner Todd Mielke said less than a year ago the proposal is “just very rough, back-of-napkin stuff.” That’s an understatement. The whole concept still lacks accurate numbers and the ballot measure asks the voter to authorize a blank check of $15 million for what is now a $10 million project. Even worse, this project, among others, is not in the county’s capital facilities plan as required by state law.

As with so many county capital expenditures in the last five years, including the Liberty Lake golf course reconstruction ($6.3 million) and the purchase and renovation of the Spokane County Raceway Park ($7 million), our current county commissioners have simply ignored state law. The proposed animal control facility is no exception.

RCW 36.70A.070(3) requires elected officials to prioritize necessary public projects and have at least a six-year financial plan that clearly identifies adequate sources of public money to fund these projects. This is called a capital facilities plan. The law requires counties and cities to forecast future capital facility needs, predict locations and capacities of these facilities, and plan for the cumulative financial impact of major public projects on the community. An updated plan is supposed to eliminate willy-nilly tax increase requests and impulse bidding by county officials at auctions.

Spokane County adopted a compliant capital facilities plan in 2001, but this plan has not been updated as required. If it had been, the new SCRAPS facility may have been planned for and funded by the county’s real estate excise tax fund known as REET 1. But REET has been robbed and depleted by the county commissioners for two special-interest projects: Liberty Lake golf course reconstruction and Spokane Raceway Park.

The debt on the bond for the recent reconstruction of the Liberty Lake golf course is over $540,000 a year for 20 years. Including interest, this amounts to approximately $10.5 million for an enterprise fund that is supposed to be financed and operated in a manner similar to private business. In other words, the Golf Course Fund is supposed to be self-supported by fees – rounds of golf – not by other county funds needed for general-fund capital projects, such as an animal control facility.

The commissioners’ purchase of Spokane Raceway Park sent the county’s REET into a financial hole. They used REET to finance a 20-year, $7 million general obligation bond paid for at an annual rate of $365,863. Consequently, REET is now overspent and underfunded, so the 2012 debt of $412,506 is coming out of the general fund. To put this into perspective, this money would finance the recently dismantled property crimes unit or maintain every park in the county.

There are other ways to skin this cat. According to the county, only 41 percent of dog owners and 15 percent of cat owners license their animals. This is unacceptable. SCRAPS could almost double these percentages by emphasizing education and increasing enforcement, saving upward of $1.1 million a year to the county general fund. In fact, if regionalization occurs, SCRAPS should become an enterprise fund completely funded by animal licensing and other user fees. This concept has been done successfully elsewhere and, given political will, it can be done here.

Regionalization of animal control services is important to this community. Remodeling an older building owned by the city of Spokane is thrifty, and SCRAPS is the right organization to run the program. Unfortunately, the county commissioners jumped prematurely to put a property tax on the ballot without accurate figures, failed to get all the jurisdictions on board, and bypassed updating the county’s capital facilities plan intended to ensure new facilities are planned and there is a funding strategy to pay for them.

Measure 1 is the county commissioners’ solution to their financial mismanagement and failure to follow state law. Those of us who love our pets and license them responsibly expect a more balanced and innovative financial solution to regional animal control. Another predictable request for a tax increase is not the answer.