To talk of Washington’s looming $2.6 billion budget deficit is to view the world from high above. So it’s nice when a local reporter like the P-I’s Casey McNerthney makes a ground-level assessment about what life with a lot less cash might look like for greater Seattle.In a piece that’s remarkably prescient considering the slow demise and tragic end wrought by suspected cop-killer Maurice Clemmons, McNerthney saddled up with the Neighborhood Corrections Initiative, a hodgepodge group of police and corrections officers whose existence is threatened by budget cuts.The NCI are kind of like the bomb squad, except they’re dealing with significantly longer fuses. They prowl the streets before day break, doing routine searches on career addicts and criminals they know by name. Some stories have a happy ending. Most don’t.But as McNerthney points out, with a less robust NCI and further diminished parole department (two possibilities considering the large ax lawmakers will need to take to the budget), that’ll mean a lot less eyes on the same number of violent offenders. A scenario that could be asking for trouble. Or as a state union rep said, “a tragedy waiting to happen.”