2011 Executive Proposed Budget

Courthouse Weapons Screening

King County operates 11 courthouses: the King County Courthouse in Seattle, the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent, the Youth Services Center in Seattle, and the Involuntary Treatment Court in Harborview Hospital, as well as the District Court courthouses in Bellevue, Burien, Issaquah, Redmond, Renton/Aukeen, Shoreline and Vashon. The Sheriff’s Office’s Court Protection Unit also provides security at the Walthew Building and for the Court of Appeals.

The 2011 Executive Proposed Budget includes three changes related to weapons screening in King County Courthouses. Court Order 04-2-12050 SEA requires that everyone entering a courthouse be screened to ensure that he or she is not bringing a weapon into the building.

Currently, the Security Screeners who operate the x-ray machines and hand wands are budgeted in and receive basic administrative support from the Facilities Management Division of the Department of Executive Services, while the Marshals who provide armed security at entrances are budgeted in and managed entirely by the Sheriff’s Office.

*  The rate impact for the Sheriff’s Office includes:

The 2011 Executive Proposed Budget includes the following three proposals:

Proposal 1: Transfer of the Security Screeners’ budget to the Sheriff’s Office and consolidation of budget and management of all weapons screening services in the Sheriff’s Office.  This transfer entails moving 36.5 FTE Security Screeners to the Sheriff’s Office.

Proposal 2: Close the Tunnel entrance that connects the Administration Building to the King County Courthouse. This closure saves $388,714, cuts 1 Marshal and 5 Security Screener FTEs, and is one component of the reductions necessary to close the General Fund deficit. The Tunnel entrance is used primarily by County employees and has by far the lowest usage rates of the three entrances to the courthouse. Roughly three times more people use the 4th Avenue entrance and four times more use the 3rd Avenue entrance than use the Tunnel. Given these disparate usage rates, the closure of the Tunnel will have less impact on wait times to enter the courthouse than the closure of either of the other two entrances.

Proposal 3: Create a weapons screening rate that applies to tenants of all of the county’s courthouses. The Sheriff’s Office is responsible for courthouse weapons screening; however, the level of service related to providing that service has never been clearly articulated. The creation of the rate will provide a formal mechanism by which courthouse tenants can identify the level of service they want and a mechanism to identify the required funding.

Because the implementation of the weapons screening rate involves transferring budget from the Sheriff’s Office to other agencies, it has no impact on the bottom line of the General Fund. However, the rate does impact the bottom line of the tenant budgets. The result is an inflation of those budgets by the amount of their weapon screening rate charge, which leaves the artificial impression that agency base budgets are increasing.  The table above details the impact of the rate on agency budgets, including both criminal justice and non-criminal justice agencies that occupy county courthouses.

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