AC commissioner says county may get monetary help for mandated services, or not

RITZVILLE — Adams County Commissioner Dan Blankenship said one of Adams County’s biggest challenges is finding the money to fund all the services it’s required to provide. Nor is Adams County alone, which is why county officials from throughout the state are looking to the 2025 Washington Legislature for some monetary help meeting mandates the state has placed on them. 

Blankenship is the county representative to the Washington State Association of Counties. 

“Every county appoints one person to that committee, and that just happens to be me. So I’m the one that goes to the meetings in Olympia every two weeks and reports back to the (commissioners) what I’m hearing, what I’m seeing,” Blankenship said.  

The WSAC is working on several initiatives, but three that could matter to Adams County, he said. The first would provide funding for counties that had to establish a separate coroner’s office as of 2025. 

Previously, counties with less than 40,000 people could designate the county prosecutor as the county coroner, but the Legislature changed that.  

“We had to either elect or appoint a coroner, so we appointed one. And of course, like most of these things the state legislature has – instructed us, I guess – to do, it came with no money,” Blankenship said. 

County commissioners allocated $150,000 for the first year, including salary, a county vehicle, an office in Othello and other expenses.  

“I have the sneaking suspicion by the time all is said and done, we’ll probably spend that,” he said.  

However, according to some of the conversations at WSAC meetings, that might not be enough. 

“The number that’s being tossed around, when the people at (WSAC) are asked for a number that they think adequate would be, have suggested $470,000 per county per year,” Blankenship said. “So that makes me a little concerned that maybe I should start looking for other things that we didn’t think about.” 

Counties that were required to add a coroner all have similar finances, he said. 

“Adding another office, even if it’s much less than $470,000 per year, it’s money that no small county has laying around,” Blankenship said.  

State legislators repeatedly have said Washington faces a budget shortfall in the 2025-27 biennium, and Blankenship said it’s hard to tell how much money will be available to fund additional requests like paying for a coroner’s office. 

“I think it’s realistic to get something. I don’t know if $470,000 a year is realistic,” he said. 

County officials also are looking for money to help pay part of the cost of providing attorneys for people charged with crimes who can’t afford their own lawyers. Blankenship estimated Adams County pays about $800,000 for what is called indigent defense. 

“It is a lot of money in a county where the current expense part of our budget is about $13 million,” he said. 

The Washington Supreme Court heard arguments in November on a proposal from the Washington State Bar Association to reduce the number of cases that can be assigned to each indigent defense attorney. Blankenship said if the Supreme Court accepts the proposal, it could get expensive for Adams County. 

“Caseload standards need to be adjusted so that each of the individuals who provide public defense are working less cases with more staff. That’s going to be a huge expense because it’s probably going to double the number of attorneys you’ve been asked to hire to provide public defense,” he said. 

A bill currently in front of the legislature would require the state to pay 50% of current indigent defense costs, and all the costs above what counties are paying now, if they are required to add more attorneys. Blankenship said he thinks the Legislature may approve paying 50% of current costs. 

The County Road Administration Board, which is part of the state’s oversight of county road systems, is asking the Legislature to start a grant program that would help counties upgrade what are called rural access roads. Blankenship said that money would help counties with roads that aren’t eligible for other grants.  

“Some of these less traveled roads, some of which we inherited as state highways that were abandoned, etcetera, etcetera,” he said. “Small counties can’t really generate the cash to go out and redo a mile or two of a road that’s coming apart because it’s been around for 75 years. So, it would be a grant program to attack (qualifying) roads, just because there’s not a lot of extra money to maintain or rebuild. It would be specifically (targeted) at those kinds of things. The county system is sitting on quite a few miles of those kind of roads.” 

Blankenship said it’s hard to tell how successful the initiatives will be. 

“I believe something will happen on the coroner situation. The others are a bit of a crapshoot,” he said.  

There is a way for the Legislature to help, he said. 

“I just would like them to stop mandating new things for us to spend money on,” he said.  

    Adams County Commissioner Dan Blankenship said he’s not sure how many, if any, of the county’s requests to the 2025 Legislature will be funded.