OLYMPIA, WA – For years, crime victim advocates in Washington have fought for state funding to make up for dwindling federal dollars.

This year will be no different.

These advocates are asking for a minimum of $21.4 million to keep their organizations afloat. But Gov. Bob Ferguson’s budget proposal, released last month, included just $12 million as state leaders grapple with another financial shortfall.

The budget the Legislature passed last year included $20 million for crime victim programs in the first year of Washington’s current two-year budget cycle.

This money helps to fund services like 24-hour hotlines, child forensic interviews, legal advocacy, emergency shelter and additional supports for sexual assault and domestic violence survivors and victims of other crimes.

“We’re not asking for new; we’re not asking for more,” said Kate Garvey, CEO of the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center. “We’re just asking for continuation, like keep us level.”

“This is half of what we need, and we can’t help half the state,” Garvey added.

Washington’s primary funding source for victim services is through the federal Victims of Crime Act State Plan, or VOCA. That money, coming from financial penalties in federal court cases, fluctuates year to year.

But it has plummeted from nearly $75 million in fiscal year 2018 to less than $18 million six years later. It ticked back up slightly in fiscal year 2025 to $29 million, but advocates say this respite isn’t enough and underlines the year-to-year funding uncertainty.

Organizations rely on state funding to make up the difference to maintain services. But while the state’s backfilling has remained steady for several years, it hasn’t kept up with cost increases, said Sherrie Tinoco, public policy director at the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

In Washington, the money funds 140 organizations, including nonprofits, local governments and tribes, and allows over 50,000 victims to receive services each year.

“These funding gaps are real services that survivors are no longer going to receive,” Garvey said. “We’re worried.”

For the sexual assault resource center in King County, that could mean longer waits for help, fewer services and less work on preventing these crimes in the first place.

At the state’s children’s advocacy centers, which mostly get their funding through these federal and state dollars, it has already meant layoffs, said Paula Reed, executive director of Children’s Advocacy Centers of Washington.

The advocacy center in Spokane, for example, had to cut its medical services by 40%, leaving children to potentially need to go to the emergency room instead, Reed said.

“Which is a horrible place for a child to have to go and wait, let alone a parent who is trying to get help for the child who’s experienced something really traumatic,” she added. “We are sort of at this crisis point where children who are abused are going to have less access to the care that they need.”

Similar cuts have been seen at some domestic violence programs, Tinoco said.

“For each advocate that an organization lays off or doesn’t fill a vacant position, that’s a whole caseload of individuals,” she said. “That’s people that, when they call, there is no longer the ability to serve them.”

State lawmakers have floated ideas to stabilize crime victim funding. One proposal from Sen. Manka Dhingra, D-Redmond, would ensure the fund has $50 million annually through 2029 and then rise from there, but the state’s budget woes have doomed that idea.

“They are in one of the worst situations that they have been in a very, very long time,” Dhingra said, noting she was disappointed not to see the requested $21 million in the governor’s budget.

She believes not providing more funding perpetuates the sense “that no one believes survivors, no one is interested in helping them.”

Rep. Lauren Davis, D-Shoreline, is proposing increasing state court financial penalties to help pay for victim services. The legislation, House Bill 2457, had a hearing Monday in a state House committee.

Democrats in the House and Senate will release their own budget proposals in February before agreeing on a spending plan to send to Ferguson’s desk in March. The 60-day legislative session ends March 12.

Crime victim advocates will be in Olympia on Tuesday to advocate for full funding.

The Trump administration has thrown another obstacle in their way. The federal government last year looked to tie crime victim funding for states to their compliance with immigration directives. But Washington and other states have clashed with the administration over those policies.

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, along with 19 other states, sued to stop the Trump administration from withholding the funding. That case is ongoing.

This story first appeared on Washington State Standard.