Well, folks, the budget season at the local level has run its course for the year and we wanted to share a recap.
Funding cuts and financial uncertainty at the federal level loomed large in this year’s budget advocacy. Between that, 2025 being an election year, and changes to a local revenue source on the ballot in Seattle, this was a complex budget year to say the least.
The Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence proposed budget recommendations focusing on:
- no cuts to funding in gender-based violence services in both the City and County budget
- increasing investment in prevention of gender-based violence in the City budget
- restoring funding cuts from MIDD in the County budget
- ensuring gender-based violence services were included in the newly passed Criminal Justice Sales Tax resulting from passage of HB 2015 in both City and County budgets
- sustaining workers in our field by recommending a 5% increase in wages for human service workers
Let’s start with our budget advocacy in the City of Seattle. Unfortunately, there was no additional funding for gender-based violence survivors included in Mayor Harrell’s proposed budget, so we had to turn our policy efforts towards the City Council. We are grateful to the leadership and strong support of Councilmember Rinck, Councilmember Kettle, and Councilmember Solomon who collectively championed a total of 4 amendments focused on gender-based violence resulting in just over $1.6 million in additional funding for our community in 2026!
We were very pleased to see that the Mayor’s budget did include a 2% provider pay increase for human service workers and contracts. This is a much-needed step in the right direction to close the 7% gap in pay as recommended by the 2023 University of WA study on wage equity in the human services sector. Thank you to Mayor Harrell, his team and our partners in the Human Services Department for responding to the impacts of the pay penalty experienced by human service workers this budget season.
Lastly, in solidarity with our partners working in affordable housing, immigrant communities, and human services, we supported restoring funding for tenant services, food banks and meal programs, ensuring $4 million in funds to our immigrant and refugee communities was ongoing rather than one-time, funding for youth homelessness, and expanding reporting on reparations to include the area of housing. We supported these amendments because we know this work is intersectional and that survivors also depend on these supports as they seek safety from abuse.
In King County, we were pleased to see that Executive Braddock included funding for domestic violence, sexual assault, and civil legal aid services in her 2026/2027 biennium budget with a slight increase in funds for domestic violence and civil legal aid services. We focused our energy towards recommending the continuation of the 9-year MIDD Renewal and pushed to restore all proposed funding cuts to MIDD funded gender-based violence programs. We were successful on both efforts! Deep gratitude to Councilmember Mosqueda and Councilmember Barón for their leadership and support of survivors with behavioral health needs and the programs that support them.
We work collaboratively with member programs to craft our budget recommendations and none of these budget wins would have been possible without their time, dedication and strong voice and perspective on the work.
Thank you to all the folks who came to a public hearing, waited in line, or called-in to a meeting to share your stories and heart for this work. We know we are strong when we work towards a shared goal, and we look forward to working collectively in our policy advocacy in 2026!