PHOENIX (AP) — The Arizona Department of Public Safety is charging cities for the use of its crime lab and cities say they are too strapped for cash and paying the fees would affect city services including local police departments.
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“If we collect less than the $2.5 million in charges, we will have to entertain budget cuts, which would result in decreased service levels,” said Phil Case, DPS budget officer.
State officials say that without that revenue stream, any vacated positions in the lab could go unfilled, leading to a severe case backlog and potentially delaying court cases.
As of Oct. 31, there were 10 vacancies for jobs including criminalist, lab tech and supervisor.
Mississippi is the only other state that charges for state-run crime-lab analysis and until recently, it had backlogs of up to a year.
Now, only 4 percent of cases submitted to the crime lab in Arizona are more than 30 days old.
City and town officials across the state said they don’t have the cash.
The City of Douglas owes the state $23,000 in lab fees.
If they pay it, city officials say they won’t be able to hire a police officer or buy a squad car.
In June, state lawmakers cut $7.8 million from DPS funding in a last-minute effort to pass a balanced budget.
In exchange, legislators stipulated for the first time that the DPS had the discretion to charge police, sheriffs and prosecutors who use the state lab.
DPS has made an attempt to reduce the burden to city and county agencies.
The state police agency tapped into dollars from gang- and immigration-enforcement programs.
The remaining $2.5 million has been split based on the cases agencies submitted to the lab in the budget year 2007-08, which ended June 30.
The four DPS crime labs provide scientific analysis of evidence, crime-scene assistance and evidence storage.
They are expected to spend more than $20 million combined in the current fiscal year, officials said.
If agencies do not pay the $2.5 million, the DPS has little recourse.
Officials have assured the League of Arizona Cities and Towns, a voluntary membership organization of 90 incorporated municipalities, that they will continue to process cases even if cities do not pay.
“We don’t think we have a lot of options in that regard,” Case said.
“We would have to consider prioritizing the work of the agencies that pay while balancing this with public-safety needs.
“In other words, the work for an agency that didn’t pay would not grind to a complete halt, but it might slow somewhat.”
Comments
Question wrote on Nov 19, 2008 8:03 AM:
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