OLYMPIA –– The City of Olympia Finance Committee talked about state shared revenues, or state money shared with local jurisdictions, on Wednesday night during a conversation that broached the subject of paying for certain crime prevention programs, transportation expenditures and other budget items.
Some of the programs and services the city funds through state shared revenues include criminal justice assistance programs, liquor profit sharing, a marijuana excise tax share and three gas-related tax shares. The state shared revenues makes up three percent, or $2.1 million, of the city’s $85.5 million budget this year.
“It’s any type of revenue that the state has determined that they’re sharing with us,” said Nanci Lien, the city’s fiscal services director. “Monies that would have normally gone to the state general fund or for other places, through various statutes, they’ve made the decision to share that with us.”
Some of the money Olympia will get from the state will go towards a high crimes-prevention program founded in 1990 to fund domestic violence prevention and to help parents with at-risk children. This type of program gets money if a city has a crime rate more than 125 percent of the statewide average, Lien said, although all cities get a portion of this type of revenue based on population.
Olympia receives these funds on a quarterly basis to support its crime prevention.
This year, state revenues will divert $69,000 to the city based on the number of high crimes and an additional $15,000 based on the city’s population. Special programs, too, will get an additional $57,975 this year from state shared revenues. This money can be used to pay for innovative law enforcement strategies, programs for at-risk children and aid child abuse victim response. Programs to reduce domestic violence and provide counseling are approved uses of this money.
An additional amount of state shared revenues funded by liquor taxes, license fees and impound fees will be shared with Olympia, which must be used in part to fund alcoholism or other drug addiction programs. This year, Olympia expects to get $423,000 of that money. Approximately 20 percent of the funds must be used for public safety, and the rest can be used for anything other purpose the government deems appropriate.
Other state shared revenues the city will get this year include $296,362 of liquor sales tax, $103,000 of a marijuana excise tax, $1.1 million of a gas tax, which has to be used for highway programs, and a combined $77,066 between an additional gas tax and a multi-modal gas tax. The marijuana excise tax shared revenue has to be used for enforcing marijuana-related laws and the additional gas tax money and multi-modal gas tax must be used for highway purposes and transportation programs, respectively.
Other facets of the city’s budget consist of sales tax at $23 million, charges for services at $16.7 million and property taxes at $15.4 million. These income streams don’t fall under the state shared revenues sources.
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