The City and County Spar Over Who Pays for the Poor
Mayor Ronald and health officials grapple with a budget crisis over the medical care of impoverished residents, highlighting the administrative friction in 1890s Seattle.
The story, cleaned up
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Mayor Ronald has stirred up a hornet's nest regarding the care of the sick and infirm. In an effort to cut city costs, the auditing committee notified Providence Hospital that no bills for patient care would be paid by the city unless a requisition was obtained beforehand. Mayor Ronald, citing legal advice from Corporation Counsel Donworth, argues that under state law, the county commissioners hold exclusive responsibility for the poor. Health Officer Dr. K. A. Palmer noted the practical impossibility of this policy, explaining that in emergencies, they cannot leave a patient to suffer until a board office opens the next morning. While the city and county leadership debate the legal burden, the practical reality of care for the city's most vulnerable hangs in the balance.
“It would not be human to let him lie at the police station or anywhere he happened to be and suffer till Monday morning.”
The 1893 bureaucratic fight over whether the city or county holds the 'exclusive superintendence' of indigent health care perfectly mirrors modern debates about local versus regional responsibility for social services. Just as Mayor Ronald found it 'inconvenient' to fund health care beyond infectious diseases, contemporary Seattle still grapples with fragmented funding and jurisdictional buck-passing for homelessness and public health.
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