The ongoing, politically touchy subject over how to handle King County’s $93 million budget shortfall is approaching resolution, at least for this year. The council will offer up its own version in a few minutes that, despite the initial posturing, retains many of the key features of Executive Ron Sims’ budget, but with several major changes.The plan to use the lifeboat and furloughs is still a go, but the council dramatically revamped that lifeboat. Sims put several publicly popular programs into a plan for six months of funding, threatening to cut them if the legislature doesn’t pony up cash or make access to revenue easier. Budget chair Larry Phillips says the council took those programs–including drug and mental health court, the Sheriff’s gang unit, and immunization programs–funded them for the year and replaced them in the boat with unfunded mandates.It isn’t uncommon for states to create rules for local governments–for instance setting the number of hearings required for certain types of court cases–without giving local governments additional money to instate the new rules. The council is hoping that by putting those rules the aforementioned “unfunded mandates” into the lifeboat, and threatening to simply not enact them if they don’t get any additional money, the state will either cut such things willingly or give the county more money for the extra staff required to come into compliance. There are other cuts and shuffling around of money–less for parks to increase funds to public safety and health, for instance. It’s not done yet, there’s still disagreement between the council and the executive on how to make Metro work. And the furloughs plan hasn’t been finalized, the courts will likely remain open, but union leadership has expressed support so the rest of the shutdown days will probably be a go. So overall, the whole thing seems to be reaching a somewhat amicable resolution. At least for this year. If things continue as is without any victories in Olympia next year, another round of painful cuts is expected in 2010.