KING COUNTY, Wash. -- The national economic crisis is hitting the county.

Budget Director Bob Cowan is warning the County Council of a $20 million shortfall in the 2008 budget and a $60 million shortfall in 2009.

The letters were accompanied by a document which spelled out a possible 8.65-percent reduction in most departments and a one-third reduction in discretionary funds for the Health Department.

The current plan would lop $7.5 million from the sheriff's budget; that's 75 deputies.

"The current plan will cut the prosecutor's office, it will cut the sheriff's office, it'll cut the jail, it'll cut the public defender," said sheriff's spokesman John Urquhart. "So I think the public can expect there will be an awful lot of criminals that won't get arrested, won't go to jail and won't get prosecuted."

If deputies catch anyone, there would be 30 fewer prosecutors and fewer judges as well.

"The magnitude of the cuts proposed is unprecedented, anywhere that I know of," said prosecutor Dan Satterberg.

County Executive Ron Sims sounded the alarm, through his budget director, on March 31. He said this is no April Fool's joke.

"There was a sense in the county courthouse that I was only trying to scare people," he said. "I said 'I'm not trying to scare you; I am trying to tell you there is no money."'

So what's wrong? King County budget money kept climbing as long as homes were being built and sold. The slowdown is hitting home, hard.

The county is also being hit with a low rate of return on investments, and had what the budget office calls "write-downs resulting from impaired investments."

Another part of the problem is that people are holding on to their wallets. They aren't buying anything, from cars to refrigerators.

"We have to go back to the fundamentals of government, looking at every dollar and how it is spent and seeing what we can do to prioritize," said Kathy Lambert, vice chair of the Council Budget Committee.

For example, 200,000 people in King County have no health insurance. To help out the county funds clinics. But no law requires them and the clinics could be on the chopping block.

"There have been proposals to shut those down to save millions of dollars," said Budget Chairman Bob Ferguson. "What's more important, a drug court in the jail or a public health clinic in North Seattle? These are the kind of choices we'll be faced with."

Hiring freezes have been announced by the county executive and the prosecutor.

The council promises a top-to-bottom review of the budget to be followed by public hearings. The sheriff's office indicated it will hold independent hearings to determine what the public thinks of possible cuts in public safety.

The county executive and the budget chair say the big problem is that King County has only two sources of revenue, property taxes and sales. They will push the Legislature in 2009 to add to their revenue sources.