Seattle and King County Grapple with Federal Disinvestment and Threats

Seattle Councilmember Rinck and King County Councilmember Balducci are leading efforts to weather Trump-triggered storms on multiple fronts. 

The City of Seattle and King County, like cities and counties across the nation, are reeling from both immediate and anticipated impacts from the second Trump administration. From precarious local budgets to the loss of civil rights of our most marginalized communities to the risk to basic services many people depend on, we are living in a vastly different landscape than we were a few short months ago. 

But local elected officials are stepping up to try to chart a course forward. 

Seattle’s new Committee on Federal Policy Changes

On January 31, less than two weeks after Donald Trump took office as President of the United States, Seattle Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck proposed creating a new Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes. 

“Many organizations, programs and people within Seattle rely on federal funding to carry out their work and live healthy lives,” Rinck wrote at the time. “What is clear is that major changes are underway on the federal front, and local leaders must be tuned in.” 

President Sara Nelson agreed to form the new committee, with Rinck serving as its chair. Its first meeting will be this Thursday, March 6 at 2pm and will feature round tables for community partners and City offices focusing on the issues of LGBTQ rights, reproductive rights, immigrant rights, and labor protections. 

“As the chair of the select committee on Federal Administration and Policy changes, I’m focused on how federal policy shifts directly impact Seattle residents’ everyday lives,” Rinck told The Urbanist. “This committee was specifically established to address all the cascading effects from these federal administration policy changes on our community services and protections. We’re trying to take a more proactive approach to identify challenges and develop local responses that safeguard Seattle residents’ rights and well being.”

Financial impacts on Seattle

Last week Seattle joined a lawsuit with 15 other cities and counties that is challenging retaliatory actions of the Trump administration against so-called “sanctuary cities,” which include withholding federal funds from municipalities that don’t cooperate with federal immigration officials carrying out civil immigration enforcement.

“The loss of millions in federal grants and support would have an immediate and devastating impact on these vital [safety] programs,” Mayor Bruce Harrell said in a press release. “When Seattle’s local values, policies, and priorities are challenged by illegal federal actions, we will not hesitate to do everything in our power to defend our people and our rights.” 

Seattle received $207 million in federal funds in 2023, although $50 million were one-time Covid relief dollars. Of the remaining $157 million, $26 million were allocated to transportation, $23.5 million to medical assistance, $12.25 to public safety and security programs, $11.5 million to housing, $9.2 million for programs to assist the elderly, and $8.9 million to the clean water state revolving fund. 

The report on federal funds received by Seattle in 2024 should be completed in the next few months. 

Rinck highlighted two different streams of funding that her committee will be considering. “There’s the funding that the City of Seattle as a government receives directly from our federal government, and then there’s the ways in which federal funding is showing up within our city broadly, whether it be at research institutions or any of our service providers that have direct federal grants,” Rinck said.

An example of the latter is funding for food programs. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget resolution last week that would slash the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Also last week, Governor Bob Ferguson proposed a $52 million cut in funds provided for food banks by the state in the 2025-2027 biennium. If either or both of these cuts proceed as planned, people throughout Washington State, including in Seattle, will experience greater food insecurity.

Across the region, the hit on housing could be severe. Rinck referenced Enterprise Community Partners’ recent announcement that they have lost their Section 4 nonprofit capacity building grants. They’ve deployed these grants, along with technical assistance, throughout the country to build and preserve affordable homes as well as community resources like child care centers, health clinics, and homes for the elderly. 

Rinck also expressed concern that Congress might not reconfirm some of the area’s housing vouchers. 

“We are talking about people becoming homeless, a major loss to our housing resources,” Rinck said. “We’re talking millions of millions of millions of dollars, thousands of people that are housed through federal resources that flow through local agencies. That is a frightening reality to just think about the precariousness of all of that housing.” 

Rinck’s worry over housing dollars seems well-founded given the recent news from King 5 that the Trump administration intends to make major cuts to Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs and offices in the Pacific Northwest. In HUD’s Seattle office, 150 people are expected to lose their jobs, and King 5 reported that two sources believe the targeting of this region could be due to Washington’s politics.

Harrell’s press secretary Callie Craighead was more optimistic about Seattle’s exposure to loss of federal funding. “Strong constitutional protections exist that limit the federal government’s ability to coerce cities by conditioning funds,” Craighead said. “We will continue to assess actions that impact Seattle’s access to federal funding that supports all of our residents and respond appropriately.” 

But if federally-funded programs are simply cut across the board in the federal government’s next budget, local municipalities will be unable to avoid potentially disastrous impacts on their residents.

What will a cash-strapped Seattle do? 

Craighead said the City is not aware of any federal funding to their departments being frozen or impacted at this time. 

However, there appear to be some public works projects that have already been affected. The Native American Carving House project, set to build a Northwest Native Canoe Center in South Lake Union, is having trouble unlocking some federal funding, causing the winning contractor on the project to be asked to hold their bid longer than usual. 

The Seattle Center Monorail Station reconfiguration, a $15 million project of planned accessibility improvements, has not yet had its federal funding released. Its schedule must be planned around the World Cup games next summer, meaning that further delays at the start of the project could cause complications.   

And if future federal funding gets cut, whether that’s direct funding to the City or to programs within Seattle more broadly, the City will be on the hook to figure out if there’s a way to bridge the gap. 

Last fall, Rinck campaigned on the need for more progressive revenue in Seattle. “A lot of folks see that there’s a tremendous amount of wealth in this community and a real need to be investing in our basic services, and we’re not meeting the needs of our full community,” Rinck said. 

The recent success of Seattle’s Proposition 1A at the ballot has set a new corporate tax in motion that will invest in social housing. The 26-point win could also indicate public support for additional progressive taxation to invest in community needs

“There is a real appetite from Seattle voters to be making sure that billionaires and corporations are paying into the solutions to address our most pressing challenges,” Rinck said. “We’re going to have to keep talking about progressive revenue solutions because the funding will need to come from somewhere, and if we’re in a place where we need to reduce our reliance on the federal government, to keep services and life as we know it going, then that’s what we need to do.”

Raising taxes often stirs up backlash  and contentious conversations, but Rinck referenced the gravity of the moment as requiring leaders to lead. 

“We’re talking about a direct assault on working people, immigrants, LGBTQ folks, and reproductive freedom. People are struggling right now. Federal workers are facing uncertainty. Families are worried about losing health care, housing, and so many marginalized communities are under an unprecedented attack,” Rinck said. “With so much on the line, it would be irresponsible if we did not consider the full range of funding options to be able to keep our services and programs going. So that’s what people can expect from me this year trying to go about addressing this.”

King County’s budgetary woes

Worries about federal dollars for King County come as it is already struggling to address a $150 million budget deficit over the 2026-2027 biennium. Executive Dow Constantine has been preparing a budget proposal that includes large cuts across the board and would eliminate all county general fund revenue ($17.6 million) going to Public Health – Seattle & King County (PHSKC). Constantine’s proposal cuts $25.2 million from King County Community and Human Services (DCHS).

The largest departmental cut proposed is to the King County Sheriff’s Office (KCSO), where the proposal would cut $30.2 million. Around 72% of King County’s General Fund is used for criminal legal and public safety services including the KCSO, the King County Superior Court, the King County Prosecutor’s Office, Adult and Juvenile Detention, and the Department of Public Defense. Total anticipated cuts for public safety in Constantine’s proposal add up to over $85 million for the biennium.

One hope to begin to staunch the ever-worsening outlook for the King County budget is HB 1334, currently in the state legislature, would increase the amount the county could raise property taxes. Were it to pass this year, it is estimated to bring in an additional $25 million for the 2026-2027 biennium. The rate increase would compound over time, meaning it would help alleviate future budgetary strain that would otherwise continue to worsen.

At the end of January, King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci called for a “stress test” of King County funding sources to analyze the county’s exposure to federal funding volatility and plan a response. 

“The most alarming thing I heard was from one of the organizations in my district that serves youth in homelessness. They said that if their federal disbursements were stopped, they would have to close their doors within days, not weeks. And you know, that means putting young people directly onto the street,” Balducci told The Urbanist. “That was the thought about what we could do to just show people that we are going to be as ready as we can be.”

King County Budget Director Dwight Dively presented before the King County Council last week about the county’s access to money already appropriated in current or past federal budgets. In 2025, King County is expected to receive over $200 million in operating funds from the federal government, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in current and future capital projects. 

Many of those capital dollars are for King County Metro, which is expecting two $50 million federal grants in 2025. Metro has about $130 million in federal revenue budgeted in 2025, much of which is for the purchase of new buses. 

Several other county departments have a lot of exposure to federal dollars. The Climate Office is supposed to receive over $50 million in federal grants for their work. DCHS is set to receive $100 million of non-Medicaid federal funds.

“Federal funds primarily support housing and homelessness efforts and behavioral health services, with some additional federal resources coming through the state to support individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities,” said Kelly Rider, DCHS’s department director. “Any loss of federal funds will have harmful impacts on the people who rely on those services.”

PHSKC is supposed to receive $70 million of non-Medicaid federal funds, and about 100 of their employees are at least partially supported by federal grants. 

“Reductions to federal funding for these services overall would contribute to higher costs for people needing care and may lead to people going without important health services they can’t afford,” said James Appa, PHSKC’s Communications Director. “It would increase the likelihood for more and larger local outbreaks of preventable communicable diseases, like measles, and leave us less ready to respond to future pandemics and emerging diseases, like bird flu.”

Balducci said that it doesn’t appear at this time that the federal government is talking about stopping funding that is already congressionally committed. But she said the County will need to be careful with anything that is counting on new federal funding going forward.

“As of today, we’re budgeting for the gap that is in county funds, not budgeting for a gap in federal funds. If a gap in federal funds appears, that will be an additional challenge,” Balducci said.

As the county moves to address future impacts, they will have to contend with the fact that both PHSKC and DCHS are extremely reliant on federal and state Medicaid funds for various programs, including community public health clinics, the behavioral health system, and other health programs. For example, the most common insurance that patients use to pay for behavioral health treatment at the Connections Kirkland crisis center is Medicaid. 

And Medicaid might be on the chopping block. Last week the U.S. House of Representatives voted to approve a budget proposal that would include $2 trillion in cuts over 10 years, which could result in $880 billion of Medicaid cuts. More than 20% of Washingtonians receive their health care through Medicaid, and the total cost, currently split between the federal and state governments, is $22.1 billion. Meanwhile, the Washington State budget is already facing what Governor Bob Ferguson is now saying is a $15 billion deficit over the next four years. 

In 2024 King County received $310 million in state and federal Medicaid funds, and DCHS receives an additional $57 million from the federal government and $15 million indirectly through the state that supports other human services programs. If Medicaid were to be cut, Balducci said the County would need to come up with a very different way to help people get health care, and it would be unlikely to be funded at the same scale. 

King County departments attempting to withdraw their federal funds in the last six weeks have had mixed results. Some funds have remained accessible, while others have stalled. Some departments have received responses that appear to indicate the relevant technology has failed. Different funds are at different levels of risk depending on whether they are subject to certain types of congressional budget resolution or already have an existing contract. 

“The questions are not just about policy-based pressure using federal funding. It’s also just, if we fire a whole bunch of federal employees whose job it is to process things, how will they get processed?” Balducci said. “Every week we’re learning more about what does this really mean.” 

Dively is getting weekly status updates from various departments as to whether they have been able to access their federal funds. He said the situation continues to change rapidly. 

Looking forward for Seattle and King County

Balducci plans to continue focusing on this issue. “We can keep our eye on the horizon, see the threats coming over it, and potentially be ready to backfill or support especially critical services that people rely on if we have to do that,” she said.

While the County lacks the resources to backfill all federal funding, they still have agency, Balducci said, with the ability to borrow against their cash flow reserve, go to the voters, and go to the state. 

“Knowledge is power, knowing where our risks are, and working to make sure that we are actively coming up with plans to address them. We should be ready,” Balducci said. 

Emphasizing the importance of relationships with local, regional, and national partners, Balducci suggested setting up reserve funds where possible, guarding any excess funding in case the County needs it for an emergency.

And in Seattle, Rinck is eager to get to work through her new select committee.

“This committee is not just another government meeting. This is going to be a platform for community and civic power against the arbitrary and capricious forces that are trying to roll back our rights,” Rinck said. “When the federal government abandons its responsibility to protect people, we and the City of Seattle will not stand by. We’re going to fight back at the local level, and I reject the idea that we need to water down our values or compromise on fundamental human rights. People can count on me to continue to champion these protections and work on solutions that are going to keep our neighbors safe.”

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