Joe Follansbee of the Maritime Heritage Network knows that I’m a sucker for historical preservation, and so the other day he sent me an email about a controversial move Rom Sims is making in the 2008 budget.

Here’s the background: In 2005, the Legislature passed a little noticed law that requires counties to set aside $1 of assessors’ fees for historic preservation, history programs, and preservation of historic documents. The law is usually referred to as HB 1386, and it’s expected to generate $627,000 next year in King County. Naturally, preservation and heritage groups were overjoyed at this new source of funding, which doesn’t sunset. It was seen as great opportunity to stabilize and grow struggling organizations across the county.

Traditionally, new sources of revenue are used to expand programs. We had hoped that Sims would follow precedent with his budget and continue to fund current HP programs via the general fund, and add the new money, perhaps creating a grant program that all county heritage organizations could compete for on an equitable basis. Instead, he replaced the traditional funding with the new money, wiping out the potential public benefits of the additional resource. The heritage community considers this outrageous and a violation of the spirit of the new law. We call Sims’ proposal a budget cut, because if Sims had followed precedent, the total budget for heritage and preservation would have been an estimated $1.14 million. Instead, it is almost exactly $627,000, the amount raised by HB 1386.

Technically, I guess, Sims isn’t doing anything wrong. No one is going to go under because of this. On the other hand, under his plan, no not-for-profit in the city can apply for any of the HB 1386 money, which was intended by the legislature to help grow the state’s heritage programs in all the counties, not in every county except King.

I’m not sure what Sims is intending to do with the traditional funding, since he’s moved it off of preservation, but it feels like a counterintuitive move in a town that is taking (little, wobbly) steps toward not forgetting its history by doing things like supporting MOHAI’s move out of its hard-to-reach enclave by the Arboretum and into South Lake Union and steadfastly ignoring my brilliant Seafair ideas.

Related posts:

1. Sims vs. Hutcherson: The Match
2. happy manhattan project preservation day
3. A Win-Win Proposal
4. Is it easy being green?
5. MOHAI may bring SLU’s acronym quotient higher