Island County Board of Health approves resolution supporting funding
Published 1:30 am Friday, February 27, 2026
Funding for emergency readiness and disease outbreak response is at risk of being cut, as Island County commissioners learned last week during a Board of Health meeting.
Shawn Morris, the director of Island County Public Health and a naturopathic doctor, explained that Gov. Bob Ferguson has proposed a $29 million reduction in the 2026 supplemental budget for Foundational Public Health Services. In addition, there is an approximately $20 million shortfall in the budget, due to challenges with collection of vape taxes versus projections.
This amounts to nearly $50 million in reductions across the state’s public health system. This translates to a loss of about $300,000 to $400,000 annually in funding for Island County, Morris noted.
The Board of Health approved a resolution that Morris presented that provides support for Foundational Public Health Services funding. In an attached memo to the 10th District Legislative Delegation, it was written that the funding allows Island County leaders to “manage infectious diseases like tuberculosis, respond rapidly to emerging outbreaks and provide locally relevant health information to our community.”
Foundational Public Health Services are core services which the governmental public health system is responsible for providing in a consistent and uniform way in every community in Washington, according to the state Department of Health website.
Dr. Howard Leibrand, the county’s health officer, wondered if part of the problem is due to the decrease in usage of vapor products, to which Morris said he believed it was part of the picture.
