Who’s going down with this ship?King County bought an $8 million boat, put up public health as collateral, and basically tried to assure voters that the state would have to give them new taxing authority to actually pay for that boat. But the state didn’t. Sims at first didn’t even acknowledge that in an early press release praising the final version of the budget bill, but this morning he, along with council members Julia Patterson and Dow Constantine, called on the state to consider giving them some kind of new taxes to keep that rapidly sinking boat afloat. After all, Sims didn’t just propose buying that boat, the entire council got on board.Unfortunately, with that Swine Flu scare, the public is much less likely to forgive them for putting all those health care programs into the boat. Their chances in Olympia aren’t good. The bill bailing out the rest of the King County budget barely squeaked through. And legislators rejected Rep. Ross Hunter’s attempt to amend it to include a utility tax that would have saved the lifeboat.