WASHINGTON – APRIL 19: Marti Anderson of Des Moines, Iowa wears advocacy promotional buttons at the National Victims’ Rights Week 2007 National Observance and Candlelight Ceremony at the United States Chamber of Commerce on April 19, 2007 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Jamie Rose/Getty Images)
Sherrie Tinoco has never been more frightened about the future of her work helping survivors of domestic violence than she is right now.
That’s because the main funding source for victim services in Washington is projected to be cut in half before the end of next year. It’s called the Victims of Crime Act State Plan, and it funds services for around 52,000 crime victims a year. About 70% of all victim services funding flowing through Washington’s Office of Crime Victims Advocacy comes from the state plan.
A few years ago, the state plan was funded entirely through federal dollars from the Victims of Crime Act. But the federal money has been steadily declining — from $74.7 million at its high in 2018 to about $17.8 million last June, the lowest amount in a decade. Rather than taxes, the dollars come from fines, forfeited bonds and other financial penalties in certain federal cases, which makes the federal funds volatile.
Plummeting balance in federal crime victims fund sparks alarm among states, advocates
“In the time that I’ve been in the field, we’ve lost five domestic violence programs in the state of Washington,” Tinoco told lawmakers during a September state Senate Law & Justice meeting on the issue. Tinoco has worked at Emergency Support Shelter in Longview since 2005.
“If nothing changes, there’s many more programs that are going to be having those same conversations about if, when and how to either dramatically cut back services or shut their own doors. We can’t let that happen,” Tinoco said.
A few years ago, the state decided to kick in $40 million to keep funding for the state plan steady — but those supplemental funds are set to expire in June 2025. The Department of Commerce, which oversees the state Office of Crime Victims Advocacy, is requesting another $51 million for the 2025-2027 biennium.
The department is also asking lawmakers to pass a bill ensuring funding for the crime victims fund continues into the future. Under the agency’s requested legislation, the state would start by kicking in whatever’s needed to make the fund total $50 million — including federal funding — before slowly increasing the aggregate total to $70 million.
If the state doesn’t provide more funding, more than 140 organizations could take a financial hit. These include nonprofits and local and tribal governments that provide services for victims of crimes like domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse.
“I represent a large agency that is arguably among the most financially stable of all the standalone programs — yet we are disaster planning,” said Kate Krug, CEO of the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center.
What the program funds
The Victims of Crime Act State Plan is unique in how many different types of programs it supports.
While much of the funds go to victims of sex abuses, the state plan serves a wide range of victims, including those of robbery, arson, identity theft and elder abuse, as well as loved ones of homicide victims. Services provided include legal advocacy, emergency shelter, housing assistance, therapy, forensic exams and more.
The plan also funds services in all 39 of Washington’s counties and in 17 of the state’s 29 federally recognized tribes.
At King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, one of the largest organizations of its kind in the state, VOCA dollars go to a 24-hour resource line for survivors, therapy services and victim advocates who support survivors through the criminal justice process. The resource center also provides prevention education services.
“We have a three-person team who is in schools and out in the community, and their backlog of requests for assistance is long as your arm,” said Laurel Redden, communications director at the resource center. “We’re talking directly with students in front of classrooms. We’re in churches, we’re in community groups. We’re in all sorts of places.”
Potential fallout from losing the money
Redden said the resource center has calculated the consequences of losing Victims of Crime Act funding: For every $100,000 dollars lost in the center’s budget, 70 survivors won’t get help.
For smaller organizations, losing funding may mean shutting their doors, Redden said.
“Rural communities, those who are sort of by and for culturally specific populations, [and] tribal organizations who work with sexual assault survivors — this is an existential crisis for them,” Redden said. “They may have one advocate on staff or something of that nature, where this VOCA funding is paying for that person entirely.”
Even organizations that don’t receive VOCA funding may feel the cuts, said Beatriz Arakawa, family advocate manager at Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe in Port Angeles. Arakawa’s tribe doesn’t get VOCA funding, but she’s worried that partners and organizations she collaborates with to provide services who do receive the funding will have to shut down.
“We’re very rural,” Arakawa said. “We cannot just do things alone.”
About 10.5% of VOCA State Plan funds go directly to tribes. Arakawa pointed out that Indigenous people are disproportionately impacted by sexual violence and homicide. Indigenous people in the United States are twice as likely to be victims of sexual violence. Washington’s rate of missing and murdered Indigenous women is second in the nation.
“Having no funding or less funding — it will really hurt us,” Arakawa said.
A legislative solution
Washington wouldn’t be the first state to attempt a legislative solution to declining federal Victims of Crime Act dollars. In 2023, Maryland passed the Victim Services Stabilization Act, which requires the state to kick in enough that, in addition to federal funding, their victim services programs receive an aggregate of $60 million a year.
The instability of federal funding was “ripping at the fabric of Maryland’s victim services safety net,” said Lisae Jordan from the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault, who helped draft the state’s bill.
“It’s very helpful in the field to have the confidence that there is going to be a stable pot of money, instead of what was a continual worry about radical shifts in the funding,” Jordan told Washington lawmakers at the Senate Law & Justice hearing.
The Maryland solution was seen as a long-term fix, and the Washington Department of Commerce used Maryland’s legislation as a model for its own request. Maryland lawmakers decided on $60 million because it was roughly what their federal funding level was at its peak — and the state needed $50 million to maintain its current programming.
The Washington Department of Commerce is proposing a higher floor, at $70 million, even though the state currently funds the victim services plan at $50 million. That’s because needs based on population size are $70 million, according to the agency.
“We know that we’re not fully meeting the needs yet,” said Trisha Smith, managing director for the Department of Commerce’s Office of Crime Victims Advocacy.
Smith said Commerce’s request for more funding and a legislative fix is a “high priority” for the agency going into the next legislative session in January. She’s hoping lawmakers consider how important having stable funding is — around 50% of nonprofits in Washington have less than three months of reserve funding, Smith said, which makes it hard to build up robust services.
Redden said that not being able to plan ahead makes it difficult for organizations to even consider helping out their peers if cuts happen. If smaller organizations shut down victim services, it’ll have a ripple effect, said Redden, and larger organizations may not be able to absorb it because they’ll be cutting staff as well.
“If we start pulling the ability to get immediate help, we are risking the future, particularly for the children and the teenagers that we do work with,” Redden said.