King County voters saying yes to crisis care centers levy in April 2023 special election

A pro­posed nine year prop­er­ty tax levy that would fund the con­struc­tion and oper­a­tion of five walk-in cri­sis care cen­ters for peo­ple fac­ing acute beha­vo­r­ial health chal­lenges in Wash­ing­ton State’s largest local­i­ty is pass­ing hand­i­ly in ear­ly returns, which is good news for the future of health­care in King County.

54.43% of the votes tal­lied and report­ed out as part of King Coun­ty’s April 2023 Spe­cial Elec­tion Night drop favor King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1, the offi­cial name of the cri­sis care cen­ters levy, which has also been the moniker of oth­er levies in years past, includ­ing as recent­ly as last Novem­ber. 45.57% were opposed.

160,205 votes have been cast for Propo­si­tion 1 thus far and 134,129 against.

Vot­er turnout cur­rent­ly stands at 21.35%, which does­n’t sound like much (and isn’t) but is actu­al­ly more than half of the total num­ber of vot­ers who are expect­ed to turn out in this odd-year spe­cial elec­tion across the whole county.

The bal­lot title that vot­ers saw was:

King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion No. 1
Cri­sis Care Cen­ters Levy

The King Coun­ty Coun­cil passed Ordi­nance 19572 con­cern­ing fund­ing for men­tal health and sub­stance use dis­or­der services.

If approved, this propo­si­tion would fund behav­ioral health ser­vices and cap­i­tal facil­i­ties, includ­ing a coun­ty­wide cri­sis care cen­ters net­work, increased res­i­den­tial treat­ment; mobile cri­sis care; post-dis­charge sta­bi­liza­tion; and work­force sup­ports. It would autho­rize an addi­tion­al nine-year prop­er­ty tax levy for col­lec­tion begin­ning in 2024 at $0.145 per $1,000 of assessed val­u­a­tion, with the 2024 levy amount being the base for cal­cu­lat­ing annu­al increas­es in 2025–2032 under chap­ter 84.55 RCW, and exempt eli­gi­ble seniors, vet­er­ans, and dis­abled per­sons under RCW 84.36.381. Should this propo­si­tion be:

[ ] Approved
[ ] Rejected

Oppo­si­tion came from a crew of right wing anti-tax folks, rep­re­sent­ed in the voter’s pam­phlet by Jim Coombes, Suzie Burke, and Tim Eyman.

“Don’t fall for their trick!” implores the oppo­si­tion state­ment, which was almost cer­tain­ly draft­ed by Eyman, an NPI foe lack­ing in self aware­ness. “Politi­cians (Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats) are mas­ters at manip­u­lat­ing us. Gov­ern­ment spends exist­ing tax­es on pet projects and then forces us to vote for essen­tial ser­vices. It’s a trick. And when we fall for it, politi­cians just do it again. But not this time!”

Eyman would know all about polit­i­cal trick­ery: he is a decades-long politi­cian who per­fect­ed the dark art of devel­op­ing deceit­ful­ly word­ed ini­tia­tives to defund our essen­tial pub­lic ser­vices, exploit­ing a lack of safe­guards in Wash­ing­ton’s ini­tia­tive and ref­er­en­dum process. For years, Eyman was also giv­en a mega­phone by state and local media out­lets to dis­hon­est­ly pro­mote his deceit­ful ini­tia­tives, often going unchal­lenged. Thank­ful­ly, those days have come to an end.

King Coun­ty vot­ers, who have long viewed Eyman with con­tempt, are reject­ing his argu­ments. Eyman did his side no favors by sign­ing the voter’s pam­phlet state­ment and appear­ing on tele­vi­sion in oppo­si­tion to the levy. In mak­ing him­self the pub­lic face of the oppo­si­tion to the levy, he was arguably help­ing to pass it.

If we had a more pro­gres­sive prop­er­ty tax code, rather than dra­con­ian poli­cies like Eyman’s not-yet-repealed Ini­tia­tive 747, it would be much eas­i­er for King Coun­ty to fund its essen­tial ser­vices as part of the reg­u­lar bud­get­ing process, rather than send­ing levies to vot­ers to secure resources for things we need.

“King Coun­ty can no longer wait for state and fed­er­al invest­ments to meet the scale of our region’s behav­ioral health needs, which is why I pro­posed the Cri­sis Care Cen­ters levy with input from cities, com­mu­ni­ties, providers, first respon­ders, law enforce­ment, and the work­force,” said King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine after the drop. “I am opti­mistic about the ear­ly results while we wait for more votes to be count­ed and appre­ci­ate vot­ers’ sup­port for urgent action.”

“The cur­rent sys­tem is inad­e­quate for the lev­el of need we see in our com­mu­ni­ty. A coun­ty of 2.3 mil­lion peo­ple must have a func­tion­al and con­nect­ed behav­ioral health sys­tem that pro­vides time­ly, effec­tive, com­pas­sion­ate men­tal health and sub­stance use care, with access and qual­i­ty at least equal to phys­i­cal health­care. Inac­tion is not an option, and I know the pro­posed invest­ments in behav­ioral health will have trans­for­ma­tive impacts.”

Con­stan­tine and King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Gir­may Zahi­lay cheered the ini­tial results at an Elec­tion Night par­ty on Capi­tol Hill, cel­e­brat­ing with cam­paign staff and sup­port­ers who have been labor­ing for weeks to get out the vote and com­mu­ni­cate the cam­paign’s mes­sage to vot­ers. The cam­paign raised over half a mil­lion dol­lars for its oper­a­tions and secured the sup­port of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, the labor move­ment, and many civic organizations.

NPI endorsed King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion 1 and cam­paigned for a yes vote.

Bal­lot count­ing will con­tin­ue for two more weeks, at which point the spe­cial elec­tion will be cer­ti­fied and the results will become offi­cial. The feel­ing among advo­cates is that the per­cent­age of the yes vote will like­ly increase in the late bal­lots, result­ing in a larg­er mar­gin of pas­sage than what we’re see­ing tonight.