Grays Harbor County is facing a projected $8.5 million deficit in 2026. Departments have been asked to cut 15% each from their budget proposals for next year.

District 1 Commissioner Georgia Miller took to Facebook to explain the situation and ask constituents to identify their priorities.

“The Board of County Commissioners is responsible for balancing the county’s overall budget across all elected offices and departments. However, the commissioners do not determine how other elected officials choose to allocate the funds within their own departments. Each elected official is accountable for managing their department’s budget once overall funding levels are set,” Miller wrote. “A letter was sent to all departments requesting that they identify how they can absorb a 15% reduction from their 2026 budget requests. More than $4 million of the $8.5 million deficit is the result of increased costs, including higher insurance rates and contractual salary obligations.”

Gray’s Harbor County Sheriff Darrin Wallace also took to Facebook to detail what significant cuts would look like for the Sheriff’s Department.

“The Board of County Commissioners has requested that the Sheriff’s Office reduce its operating budget by $2.16 million. This level of reduction is not feasible without severely compromising public safety and the essential services we provide. Over the past several years, the Sheriff’s Office has already made substantial cuts and streamlined operations to focus solely on core services,” Wallace wrote. “These reductions have led to the elimination of our Search and Rescue Operations, Swift Water Rescue Team, a reduction to our Traffic Division, and a reduction to our Resident Deputy Program. The Sheriff’s Office is currently down three patrol deputy positions and two corrections deputy positions from our 2021 staffing levels. Further reductions would critically impair our ability to serve and protect the residents of Grays Harbor County.”

Wallace mentioned layoffs and the elimination of the Investigations Division and the Drug Task Force and 24-hour patrol coverage as casualties of potential cuts.

In a response to a Facebook post, District 3 Commissioner Vickie Raines commented that she is against cuts to the Grays Harbor Sheriff’s Office.

“While the county looks at various options to reduce an $8.5 million deficit, I am not supportive of reducing county law enforcement. Our criminal and corrections staff do an incredible job for the county. I support Sheriff Wallace and all of our deputies — as well as the brave and challenging work they do to keep all of our communities safe — taking criminals and drugs off our streets,” Raines wrote. “Public Safety has always been and will continue to be my top priority as I further support various law enforcement measures throughout the communities of Grays Harbor. There are other options to reduce the deficit, but public safety is not an option for me.”

The 2025 Grays Harbor County General Fund submitted budget was $51 million, $40 million without ending cash and $46 million current. County revenue sources include taxes, penalties, and interest in assessed property, sales tax, court fines, fees and criminal justice funding, licences, permits and fees for services, investment earnings, transfers from other funds, federal, state and local grants and forest harvest and yield taxes.

The Grays Harbor Sheriff’s Office accounted for the largest portion of the County’s 2025 budget at $7.5 million, which includes salary and benefits. In Clallam County, which has a similar population to Grays Harbor County, the 2025 sheriff’s department’s operations budget is $9.4 million.

The County’s budget request for 2026 is $54 million.

Grays Harbor County Administrator Sam Kim says there are numerous factors that have led to the projected $8.5 million deficit.

“Several reasons … because of the past practice of deficit budgeting, those muscles are hard to lose. We’re also projecting on the revenue side declining interest rate, we’re projecting grant reductions, and potentially slowing economic growth,” Kim said. “We’re projecting that we cannot be lucky like we have been before because the ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) dollars were a boon to our budget, the high interest rate, unexpected, brought in millions of dollars additional. That was luck, that was not planned. We cannot budget based upon luck, hope and prayer. We actually have to budget based upon what is real. We’re expecting lower revenue and we have increased expenses.”

According to Kim, those expenses include “skyrocketing” criminal justice costs, a $1 million increase in insurance premiums, inflation caused by lower interest rates, aging infrastructure, collective bargaining and expected salary raises, storm damage, overall risk and structural deficit.

Kim said the structural deficit comes from redundant, duplicate and inefficient processes that are prone to mistakes and errors.

“We estimate if we can standardize and we can consolidate processes and centralize organization and ultimately automate a lot of these manual tasks we think there can be a large number of folks who can be repurposed to do other things,” Kim said. “We’re looking at attrition, we’re going to need fewer and fewer people as we become more efficient. The structural deficit is because of the way we’re organized, because of the way our processes are done in a very siloed fashion, and in non-standard very different ways when it should be all done in the same way.”

When it comes to the social media firestorm that has been touched off by a handful of posts from elected officials, Kim says it’s a good thing.

“What a great opportunity,” Kim said. “Wouldn’t it be great if the public were aware what the needs are and I believe we can channel all that energy to properly fund law enforcement. Today, we’re in this untenable situation because of the structural deficit, because of the rising costs in the criminal justice system. I believe all this social media stuff is expressing a real need the county has. This real need cannot be met when we have declining revenue. I think this is such a great opportunity for us to propose some sort of law enforcement levy. What if all these (social media) posts made a compelling case for why the drug task force needs to be supported? With our county being number one in the state in opioid deaths, I believe that based on all the passion I see on social media that we can at least have a compelling case for the public to consider supporting law enforcement properly.”

The deadline for Grays Harbor County to adopt the 2026 budget is Dec. 31, and Kim believes it will be completed by early December.