Imagine a Seattle shopkeeper whose merchandise is repeatedly stolen by someone paying for a drug addiction. If treatment helps him recover and stop stealing, she has one less threat to her business. It sounds plausible to include treatment in the City’s response to crime. Seattle is being asked to do just that.
A September 10, 2026, letter from business and community leaders calls for foot and bicycle patrols, City-coordinated offers of treatment and shelter to illegal drug users, and arrest and prosecution after repeated refusal. Former council member Tim Burgess’s September 14 essay supports mandated treatment for some frequent offenders who repeatedly refuse help, City funding for housing with and without sobriety requirements, and closer monitoring of individual progress.1
As a former municipal finance director, I would want the council to decide what it is asking the City to undertake before staff start looking for the money. Police should protect the shopkeeper against theft, not punish drug use as such. Requiring residents to finance the thief’s recovery is a separate undertaking that needs its own justification. If the council accepts responsibility for recovery, it must decide how far that responsibility extends when a client needs housing or continuing support.
The expected reduction in crime is part of the argument for taking on that responsibility. It needs to be examined too. Burgess includes treatment enrollment and fewer arrests among measures of success. Neither tells me, on its own, whether the shopkeeper is less likely to lose merchandise again. Not everyone who steals does so to support a drug habit. And not everyone with a drug habit steals to support it.
Another argument is that treatment might cost less than repeatedly arresting and prosecuting the same people. Neither proposal makes an explicit claim of such savings. There is favorable evidence for diversion: the Washington State Institute for Public Policy’s June 2025 report estimates $7.39 in benefits for every dollar of counted program costs. But what does that number actually tell us? The figure combines estimated criminal-justice cost reductions, avoided harm to crime victims, and a taxation adjustment. It is not a forecast of $7.39 returning to Seattle’s treasury. The family supplies the money, while officials choose its use instead of leaving that dollar available to help an aging parent or build emergency savings. Even if the program benefits that family, the family cannot keep the dollar or withdraw its contribution, as it could stop a charitable donation.
The WSIPP estimate also leaves important questions about Seattle’s proposals unresolved. Its counted program costs cover staff, administration, and participant services through the state’s Recovery Navigator Program, but exclude substance-use and mental-health treatment and other supporting services to which participants may be referred. The estimate also omits possible benefits from reduced substance use and fewer deaths. It does not tell the council what Seattle’s proposals would cost or what the City would save.
Even a successful program does not necessarily save the City money. If a handful of repeat offenders stop stealing, officers may have more time for other calls while remaining on the payroll. That additional availability has value, but it does not pay for a treatment contract. Nor does the value of merchandise the shopkeeper no longer loses. To call something a budget saving, we would need to know what City spending would fall or be avoided—overtime, a planned hire, or something else—and when.
In fact, Seattle already finances this kind of work, and has been doing so for more than a decade. Its 2026 adopted budget added $5 million in ongoing funding for Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, or LEAD, to replace temporary appropriations and expiring federal grants. That decision preceded September’s proposals. Burgess explicitly supports LEAD while seeking more monitoring and recovery support; he does not specify a replacement program. The council has already renewed the existing undertaking. It now needs to explain what that spending has accomplished and why the proposed changes would improve on it.
Once the City accepts responsibility for recovery, providers can identify additional housing or support as necessary to make treatment succeed. An annual appropriation limits current spending but leaves the council to decide which additional needs to finance when providers say recovery depends on them.
Those renewal decisions also affect providers’ own financing. A drug recovery nonprofit that accepts a government grant may reduce its private fundraising, a response documented in research on grants. The nonprofit may have more resources, while relying less on private donors. Officials therefore cannot assume that private donations would simply replace the grant if it ended.
Burgess describes Seattle’s approach over roughly a dozen years as a failure and calls for discontinuing ineffective funding. A disappointing program can still point to people it has helped. Once officials accept responsibility for recovery, those individual successes become reasons to continue funding. Employees, providers and beneficiaries can ask for another chance or more complete services. The pressure is then to expand or rehabilitate the program rather than terminate it. If the council weighs those successes without considering what continued taxation takes from residents, it has left out the people who must finance another chance.
Whether to compel treatment is better decided in an individual court case, where the facts of the case can be evaluated. An appropriate juvenile case, for example, could involve treatment paid for privately or voluntarily provided by a charity. There is no need for the City of Seattle to finance it, keep places ready for referrals, or guarantee availability. The City should protect the shopkeeper against theft, not assume responsibility for the thief’s recovery.
The proposals and LEAD. Joint business and community letter, September 10, 2026, pp. 1–2; Tim Burgess, “Let’s Acknowledge Failure, Take a New Approach,” September 14, 2026. Neither prices a complete package, makes a blanket treatment-is-cheaper claim, or specifies the new public-safety sales tax as its funding source. Burgess supports LEAD while seeking more monitoring and recovery support; he specifies no replacement program. His description of past failure is his assessment, not a finding that every program failed. These are advocacy proposals, not enactments.