Accountable?

More political clout for them, less control for you.

The RFA Board will be a special interest level of government, focused on doing one thing and no need to weigh the broader communities interests and make tradeoffs based on value and values.

The public will see the new Fire Benefit Charge blended into an already complex property tax bill, making it difficult for the public to assign responsibility for the increased costs.  

Even a discerning public will find accountability hard to assign to a new level of government. How many of us can name our school board members? Our lack of local government news coverage is sparse enough when covering city and county governments.  

The political power advantage of a single issue constituency working through a single interest agency was not lost on the advocates of the RFA. In a PowerPoint (see below) called "Why an RFA?", authored by Ann Cook, Tumwater's Communications Manager, the first argument for combining fire departments is "More Political Clout".

And along with “more political clout” the next slide points out, “salary costs typically increase because the agency is larger" and the "cherry picking the best of all labor contracts into one"

The same RFA document notes, “A RFA could be perceived as eliminating local control.”  

That is what Proposition 1 means:  Less local control by the voters and more political clout and higher spending for government employees. 

Another RFA argument is that budget competition harms our fire department. But that is countered with 100 plus years of our fire department competing with other city services and providing great service.  For example, Olympia FD is 2nd to none in Washington state for a city its size.  

What organization wouldn't want its own private taxing authority and its on private policy authority?

The RFA's argument that fire departments suffer from competition for funding is only apparent in their words but not in the actual numbers. 

Comparing FY 2019 to FY 2022, there is no evidence that Fire has lost ground in its "competition" with other city priorities.  Instead, it is the opposite, growing its share from 12.0% to 13.1%.

Source: olympiawa.opengov.com, "This report shares the current year budget and year to date actuals. The report updates daily." Downloaded on 2-15-23.

Our city families and businesses also have many competing demands and limited resources.  They cannot afford to pay for everything that every department would like to spend. 

That is why, from a taxpayer's perspective, we want our elected officials to grapple with the tradeoffs among competing investments for fire, police, streets, sidewalks, parks and other programs. 

Isolating a function like fire and emergency services from the essential priority setting function of full service cities ensures higher spending with less incentive and opportunity for rigorous oversight.  

Experience shows that single interest government agencies have a tendency to be captured by organized interests with the most to gain from investing their time and money in influencing it -- too often to the disadvantage of the general public.

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