Quinn applauds community wins as Council approves $20 Billion 2026-27 budget

November 18, 2025

With Tuesday’s passage of King County’s biennial budget — totaling $20 billion for the next two years — Councilmember De’Sean Quinn praised the vote and highlighted the values reflected in the plan.

“The budget is an explicit statement about our values, and shows how much we value the people in this county and ensuring they have a promising future here,” Quinn said. “Right now, with a lack of solutions from the nation’s capital to the many crises our communities face — housing and food instability, lack of access to health care, education and more — local government must step up and provide those supports. This budget, while not solving these crises, focuses on the most pressing needs of county residents, and I’m proud to have been part of crafting it.”

The 2026-27 budget invests in essential services to strengthen communities and support residents across King County. It prioritizes food access, housing stability, behavioral health and workforce development, while ensuring transparency and accountability.

Key investments include:

• Education: Expands King County Promise to provide full tuition assistance to graduates of publicly funded high schools in King County, restores Kent’s Outdoor Education program, funds athletic facilities in Renton schools and supports a Highline College partnership to help homeless students through the WISH program.
• Food security: Provides $250,000 to replace aging food bank equipment and increases operating funds to protect families from food insecurity.
• Housing and homelessness: Allocates $650,000 to bolster support for tiny home villages, increases funding for organizations and programs such as the Urban League which received $123,888, prepares for federal funding cuts, and provides $300,000 to expand programs to help seniors stay in their homes through repair assistance.
• Supporting Local Business: Invested $250,000 for Tabor 100 to support black-owned business development in South King County.
• Climate action: Establishes a climate equity framework to ensure policies benefit those most impacted by climate change.
• Transit: Improves safety across Metro transit by directing a security report on RapidRide lines that experience higher levels of safety incidents, requires transportation funding needs to be identified and addressed quickly, investing $500,000 for implementing the King County Safety Taskforce recommendations, and allocating $300,000 to coordinate regional transit issues with multiple jurisdictions including but not limited to fares, safety, and FIFA.
• Parks and green space: Dedicated staff to planning to ensure every resident lives within a quarter mile of a park or green space, while engaging schools and landowners to expand athletic facilities.
• Health care: Provides $750,000 to complete phase one of the HealthPoint Tukwila Commons clinic, offering culturally appropriate medical, dental, behavioral, naturopathic, and pharmacy services. Investing $250,000 in funding for Valley Cities to support behavioral health care and efforts to respond to Medicaid cuts, and $25,000 for operations at the Pediatric Interim Care Center which provides support for families with infants born into drug abuse.
• Affordability: Expands eligibility for wastewater capacity charge payment plans to ease burdens on working families and requires reporting on projects with rising costs.
• Social justice: Directs $300,000 to support a state reparations study and restores staffing in the Office of Equity, Race and Social Justice.

Quinn, appointed in January to represent District 5 after Dave Upthegrove’s departure, has worked on several major pieces of legislation this year, but the budget is by far the largest and most consequential.