Budget woes put public-health agencies on critical list

When Laurice Slaughter was first teamed up with a nurse, she was hardly a model of maternal promise: an unemployed teen who more often slept on other people's couches than in her own bed. But for two years, public-health nurse Erika Boyd has visited her every two weeks without fail, guiding her through an emergency C-section, postpartum depression, single parenthood and homelessness — not to mention a neophyte mother's general inexperience.

Today mother and daughter live in a subsidized apartment in Pioneer Square, and Slaughter, at 20, is hoping to enroll in community college next year. She wouldn't be the mother she is without the help she's received, she said. "I wouldn't be here right now." The funding crisis has added urgency to calls by community advocates and public-health officials for a stable revenue source to replace the lost car-tax money once and for all.

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