By Emry Dinman
The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.
SPOKANE, Wash. — For months, Spokane County officials have refused to release firefighter rescue team equipment to the city of Spokane, first claiming it was because Spokane was a sanctuary city, then arguing the city needed to re-enter an agreement and make payments to the county, and only recently conceding the city simply needs to confirm it meets federal emergency preparedness standards.
Though the issue may soon be resolved, the dispute over a relatively small amount of funding — albeit for equipment Spokane Fire Chief Julie O’Berg says is vital for rescue operations — comes amid rising tensions between the city and county and as the county agency that withheld funds from the city is facing a devastating loss of federal funding.
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City officials suspect the withholding of funds was arbitrary and retaliatory. Officials believe the county was lashing out at Spokane and putting firefighter safety and operations at risk over mostly unrelated political and policy disagreements. County officials argue the funds were withheld out of an abundance of caution, not wanting to give the federal government any reason to freeze the funding the county relies on for emergency management. The federal government has frozen the programs regardless, unrelated to any perceived provocation from Spokane -area officials.
Difficult rescues
In March, two boys playing on High Drive slid down the bluffs bordering High Drive Bluff Park and found themselves stuck.
The Spokane Fire Department was dispatched to rescue the boys, but because of the steep slopes, the department’s technical rescue team had to be called in to set up rope lines to go down and pull the boys out.
The boys were unharmed, but this type of rescue requires a well-trained, easily coordinated technical rescue team. And because of the level of redundancy required to safely navigate these and similar rescues, they demand a significant number of personnel.
Rather than pull deeply from a single department’s on-duty firefighter resources and potentially create a vacuum of personnel in the city unable to respond to other emergencies, the city partners with Spokane County Fire District 9 to the north and Spokane Valley to the east. All three jurisdictions responded in March, lifting the boys to safety.
This Regional Technical Rescue Program has around 90 firefighters from the three jurisdictions, with 40 coming from the city.
While each of the three agencies are equipped to handle rescues, their equipment has to be consistent between them to ensure smooth operations when arriving to a scene, which requires quick but delicate operations, O’Berg said in an interview.
“If you’re going to function together as a team, and we truly function together as one unit, consistency in equipment is important,” O’Berg said. “The closest team we have capable of the same response would be coming from the West Side. ... There really isn’t a close jurisdiction able to come in and provide the level of response this team does.”
For years, the county through its emergency management agency has pursued an annual federal grant ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase consistent equipment between the three partner rescue teams.
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But in May, the city was notified by Chandra Fox , the deputy director of the county’s Department of Emergency Management , that $63,000 of grant funding slated for Spokane’s technical rescue team was being withheld. Roughly $36,000 of equipment that had already arrived was reportedly sent to the other jurisdictions instead, and more outstanding orders were canceled.
Fox declined to speak to The Spokesman-Review . But in a letter to the city, she outlined her reasoning: Spokane is a sanctuary city, Fox believed, affirmed by a February resolution by the Spokane City Council voicing support for the state’s Keep Washington Working Act, which limits how law enforcement can work with federal immigration officials. While this fits the colloquial understanding of a sanctuary city, Spokane officials have repeatedly argued the phrase is legally meaningless.
President Donald Trump issued an April executive order threatening to withhold federal funds from sanctuary jurisdictions, ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to create a list of states and local jurisdictions that “obstruct the enforcement of Federal immigration laws (sanctuary jurisdictions).” Though the list had not yet been created by the time of Fox’s letter and no specific warnings had been issued about cooperating with Spokane , county officials appear to have feared that their own funding could be put at risk if firefighter safety equipment was sent to the city.
In an ironic twist, just days later, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security published that list — naming Spokane County , but not the city of Spokane , as a sanctuary jurisdiction. Amid nationwide confusion over how the federal government had determined which jurisdictions qualified, the list was quietly removed the following week.
Not long after, Sheriff John Nowels provided a new reason for withholding the funds.
“In my conversations with you since the (Fox email) was sent you clearly stated the City of Spokane is NOT a sanctuary city,” Nowels wrote to Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown in a June 23 email.
But the county had to attest to the federal government that all three agencies receiving the federal firefighter equipment funds met certain federal guidelines for operating during emergencies, Nowels added. The other two jurisdictions still had active agreements to operate under the county’s Department of Emergency Management , so the county could certify it qualified. The city, however, ended that agreement in December 2023 immediately before Brown came into office.
“As a result, we believe that the City is no longer in compliance with the eligibility requirements for the SHSP grant,” Nowels wrote. "... We could work on developing an ILA with the City of Spokane and (the Department of Emergency Management ) which would compensate the County and other regional partners fairly for the work done on the City of Spokane’s behalf through DEM.”
Everyone’s broke
The county had good reason to fear the loss of further funding from emergency management services that have already been stretched thin.
Reminiscent of the city’s pending divorce from the county 911 dispatch service, Spokane has also set up its own emergency management office, taking roughly $182,000 of annual funding from the county’s department when it left, according to county officials. It was a major hit for a county department with only $600,000 in funding from the county’s own general fund.
But while the blame for that lost revenue has been directed at Brown, it was former Mayor David Condon who originally pushed for the city to separate its emergency management, calling it a “best practice” for the core of a region’s metro area. The decision was sharply opposed by then-Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich , noting that the city was the county agency’s largest funding partner and that withdrawal would have financially crippled the agency. Condon reportedly argued, however, that the county office hadn’t been responsive to the city’s needs.
Former Mayor Nadine Woodward had delayed that decision, still hiring a city director of emergency management as the COVID-19 pandemic began while simultaneously renewing the city’s partnership with the county office. That agreement expired at the end of Woodward’s term.
The lost funding was a serious blow for the county’s emergency management office; Nowels and county officials insist the current dispute over Spokane’s firefighting equipment was justified by a need to protect what was left. Any misstep that threatened federal funding could further endanger its ability to respond to disasters — after all, even before Spokane left the partnership and took its funding with it, the office quickly became overwhelmed by the Gray and Oregon fires in 2023, Nowels said at a recent meeting.
But in the end, no amount of caution could safeguard the county’s federal funding.
Roughly $280,000 in federal funding was cut anyway, previously reliable annual payouts that paid for nearly a third of the department’s staff, along with office supplies, public education and communications equipment, translation and outreach services, training and more. The program was frozen not just for Spokane County , but nationwide.
“At this point, we are in some really unfortunate circumstances,” Fox told county commissioners on July 21 . “I’ve been doing this for almost 30 years and I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
The particular grant program that had supplied firefighter rescue equipment, the source of the current local dispute, was also cut — not by Congress , which had funded both programs, but by the unilateral mandate of the executive branch.
“The Department of Homeland Security simply decided not to disperse them,” Fox informed commissioners.
The county is now stuck between a rock and a hard place.
The county Department of Emergency Management is a legally required office, and all of its staffing positions are considered essential, according to Fox. But the county cannot easily replace all of the lost funding from its own coffers, as it faces a $20 million deficit heading into 2026.
” The Department of Emergency Management has provided emergency management systems countywide for years and years,” Nowels said in an interview.
“The viability of us being able to provide those services moving forward is getting difficult.”
Concession, tension
On Thursday, Nowels informed Brown that the city will receive its firefighting equipment so long as it can prove it meets federal standards for emergency preparedness; Brown is confident the city can show its compliance.
Brown questions the county’s shifting reasons for delay.
“It’s almost like they made the decision to cut something to the city and then they looked around for explanations as to why they did it,” she said. “I understand there’s some tensions — (Nowels) is prominent in the (county 911 dispatch service), but this is a public safety task force and half of the members are Spokane firefighters. Why should they be equipped any differently?”
Nowels argues that Brown and other city leaders brought the delays on themselves for pulling out of regional partnerships and for flirting with sanctuary policies in defiance of the Trump administration only to refuse to call them sanctuary policies when it is convenient.
“The mayor typically, when she doesn’t like what she’s being told, will twist the truth to make it fit her narrative, and then she gaslights people,” Nowels said. “She will say to whoever wants to hear it that they are a sanctuary city, and then when push comes to shove they are suddenly not a sanctuary city.”
City leaders argue the county overstepped in trying to seize funding for the city in order to proactively comply with the federal government’s anti-sanctuary policies, particularly if there was no specific directive to cut off Spokane .
More broadly, Brown believes the county’s ire at the city would be better directed at the federal government, which appeared to have arbitrarily named Spokane County a sanctuary jurisdiction despite the county’s best efforts and cut funding nationwide in any case.
“I’d be happy to have him join me in criticizing the Trump administration for pulling those funds,” Brown said.
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