With more budget cuts looming, Island County Health officials are sounding the alarm — an alarm that warns of poor preparedness for a bioterrorism threat.

“I think the people should know that in Island County and in Washington state right now, we do not have the capacity to respond to a real bioterrorism threat,” Island County Health Director Tim McDonald said recently.

McDonald’s comments were inspired by a press release from the Washington State Association of Local Public Health Officials titled, “Local public health in critical condition: Poor funding and political games risk lives.” The release outlines the financial and structural obstacles government agencies face in responding to potential health-related emergencies.

“What we’ve done for years is not fund adequately the whole broad area of communicable disease prevention,” McDonald said. “A small part of that broad area is bioterrorism, and bioterrorism allows us to understand our weakness in communicable disease.”

McDonald said that even though no anthrax was found in the state during the national scare that followed the Sept. 11 attacks, the Island County Health Department was nevertheless maxed out in responding to the numerous false reports of anthrax virus.

“It was a relatively small event,” McDonald said of the scare. “It taxed our system completely.”

Two weeks ago in Olympia, health officials from around the state testified before the State House Health Care Committee that “budget cuts could cost lives.” The release McDonald received outlined the testimony.

Perhaps the most disturbing piece of the release were comments made by Snohomish County health officer M. Ward Hinds, who stated that “if a significant outbreak of smallpox were to occur in Everett, we quickly would be overwhelmed — the 600,000 lives in my county and three million lives along the I-5 corridor would be in jeopardy.”

McDonald described these comments as “very accurate.” He said that, in general, health agencies are underfunded in Island County and across the state.

Because the Board of Island County Commissioners opted to use a large portion of the county’s reserve fund to balance this year’s budget, the health department was spared major cuts to its budget. However, without significant reserves to protect the county from certain budget difficulties in years to come, the future of funding to health programs is bleak.

About 20 percent of health department funding comes from local tax dollars, McDonald said. Early indications from the state legislature now in session are that all “backfill” funding, which makes up a portion of the revenue counties lost when the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax was eliminated in 2000, will be discontinued.

The loss of backfill funds would entail a double-blow to Island County’s health department. Not only would the department lose about $100,000 in direct funding, it could also see cuts as the county covers its own loss of approximately $400,000 in backfill money.

Most health department funding comes in the way of grants and fees. McDonald said this money is also threatened in the current climate of slice-and-dice budget balancing. He said he is most concerned about funding beyond this year.

“The handwriting is on the wall,” McDonald said. “I have to be realistic that we will probably have cuts over the next two or three or four years in our budget.”

McDonald said few people are aware of the range of services provided by local health departments, whose duties include monitoring water quality and food quality in restaurants, providing immunization services for children, as well as monitoring, responding to and investigating outbreaks of communicable diseases.

The situation gets more complicated when bioterrorism is thrown into the mix.

“When you get specific to bioterrorism you have to do a lot more things, because there’s a crime being committed, too.”

Considering that the mere threat of anthrax pushed Island County’s response capacity to its limits, it would appear too soon to sit back and breathe a sigh of relief over what has or hasn’t happened yet — and this despite reassurances that everything is under control.

“I was frustrated when I heard some national politicians reassuring the public,” McDonald said. “Most certainly, our system right now is not in a state where we can respond.”