King County may ask us to OK a sales tax hike to pay for public safety.

It’s always interesting that we’re never asked to pay more taxes to keep county office assistants, public relations departments or other miscellaneous staff on the payroll in tough times. It’s always public safety.

Don’t get us wrong. Criminal justice is a huge percentage of the county’s budget. It includes county police, jails and the county court system. Taxes notwithstanding, most people want these services to continue.

Some cuts have been made. In the last two years, the Sheriff’s Office has trimmed 70 police officers for unincorporated areas. However, those positions were absorbed by cities that contract with the county for police service.

This year, the county says that without more taxpayer support, it will have to cut criminal justice 12 percent across the board. In other words, fewer county deputies on patrol, fewer prosecutors to take the bad guys to court and fewer public defenders to keep the scales of justice in balance.

If a supermajority (60 percent) of voters agree, the county could impose a sales tax of up to three-tenths of 1 percent to fund criminal justice services. State law says that 40 percent of the revenue collected from the tax has to be shared with the county’s 39 cities. At least one-third of the revenue would have to go toward criminal justice.

King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn says he would only support a tax increase if he was confident that cuts had been made to all unnecessary areas.

That makes sense.

The question the council will have to ask itself is how deep is it willing to cut non-criminal justice areas before burdening the taxpayers with a higher sales tax?

Private businesses have had to make cuts to its non-essential personnel in order to stay in business. We know government is somewhat different. It is mandated to perform some jobs. But not all the jobs it currently does.

Government shouldn’t take the easy way out and raise taxes just to try and continue business as usual.

Several years ago, county and state government embraced setting “priorities” for allocating resources. The City of Redmond currently uses the budgeting by priorities philosophy and it has been working well.

If the criminal justice system is a priority – and it is – then use the taxes now available to pay those costs first. Then, spend the remaining tax money on the next most important tasks or duties.

Every job and every thing can’t be the same priority. If the county runs out of money before it runs out of people to pay, let it come to the voters with a request to pay for those low-priority people and tasks.

If the voters say “yes,” then fine. If not, the county should live with less.