Cities balking at crime lab fees

This is col­lat­eral dam­age from the so called “CSI Effect”. If the pub­lic demands every pos­si­ble foren­sic test be per­formed on every piece of evi­dence, regard­less of if the experts think it’s pro­ba­tive or not, the pub­lic is going to have to pay for such test­ing. Testing isn’t cheap, and the State of Arizona sim­ply can not foot the bill for every­one anymore.

Original arti­cle posted here.

State: Funding needed to avoid case backlog

by Lindsey Collom — Nov. 5, 2008 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

City offi­cials across Arizona say they won’t pay the state for DNA test­ing and other crime-lab ser­vices because they are strapped for cash and believe the imposed fee is unconstitutional.

The Arizona Department of Public Safety was count­ing on col­lect­ing $2.5 mil­lion dur­ing this fis­cal year from cities, towns and coun­ties to pro­vide them with forensic-evidence test­ing, which until now had been done for free.

Without that rev­enue stream, state offi­cials say any vacated posi­tions in the lab could go unfilled, deep­en­ing a case back­log and poten­tially delay­ing court cases. Until recently, the only other state charg­ing for lab work had a back­log up to a year.

Now, only 4 per­cent of cases sub­mit­ted to the crime lab in Arizona are more than 30 days old.

When a sus­pect in the “Chandler Rapist” case was arrested Jan. 12, it took the DPS less than 24 hours to match his DNA to sam­ples found at three crime scenes. DPS offi­cials said that because the pro­gram to col­lect lab fees from cities is new, it is unknown how much rev­enue will be collected.

“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.

But city and town offi­cials say they, too, are strapped finan­cially and are unable to pay with­out hurt­ing their basic services.

Consider:

• Police in Douglas, a bor­der town in south­east­ern Arizona, owe about $23,000 in lab fees. To pay the DPS would mean Douglas police could not hire an offi­cer or buy a squad car, Chief Alberto Melis said. The depart­ment has four vacancies.

• Casa Grande owes nearly $52,000, about the cost of a fully equipped patrol vehi­cle, Chief Robert Huddleston said.

• Sierra Vista police have been billed about $63,000. Chief Ken Kimmell said the only way to pay for the fees, “whether it’s $190,000 or $60,000, is to reduce our staffing, which really isn’t fair to our constituents.”

“For me to come up with this money, I’m going to have to do with­out some­thing,” Melis said. “In a pro­fes­sion where 95 per­cent of your cost is per­son­nel, I might not be able to hire somebody.”

Funding crunch

State law­mak­ers in June 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.

In an attempt to reduce the bur­den to city and county agen­cies, the DPS 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 actual agency cost for the DPS to process evi­dence from Casa Grande police in fis­cal 2008 was about $288,000. The DPS ini­tially pro­rated the city’s cost to about $161,000, which was later reduced to about $52,000. The Gilbert Police Department, which sent 2,253 cases to the state lab, owes about $115,000.

The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office sent in 1,115 cases and owes about $53,000.

Municipalities say it will be dif­fi­cult to pay the reduced fee. The con­cern is not just for this bud­get year but years to come.

“Although DPS was able to lower the amount sig­nif­i­cantly, we cer­tainly don’t antic­i­pate that hap­pen­ing next year,” Huddleston said.

“The real chal­lenge to come is going to be in the next fis­cal year.”

Little recourse

The four DPS crime labs, which pro­vide sci­en­tific analy­sis of evi­dence, crime-scene assis­tance and evi­dence stor­age, are expected to spend more than $20 mil­lion com­bined in the cur­rent fis­cal year.

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 munic­i­pal­i­ties 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.”

Adding to the lag would be the department’s poten­tial inabil­ity to fill vacated positions.

State crime labs now process nearly dou­ble the amount of cases they received just six years ago. DPS records show agen­cies sub­mit­ted 29,425 cases for test­ing in fis­cal 1999–2000.

By fis­cal 2006-07, that num­ber had grown to 52,026.

The amount of evi­dence requir­ing blood/DNA test­ing had more than dou­bled since July 1999, to 4,435 from 2,194 cases. Submissions for tox­i­col­ogy test­ing also grew about 156 per­cent in the same period.

To meet the demand, crime-lab staffing has increased by more than 50 posi­tions to 158 full-time slots.

As of Oct. 31, there were 10 vacan­cies for jobs includ­ing crim­i­nal­ist, lab tech and supervisor.

DPS offi­cials expect the fee sys­tem to be per­ma­nent, or at the very least a mul­ti­year feature.

Mississippi’s model

Mississippi is the only other state that charges for state-run crime-lab analysis.

The fee sys­tem has been in place since 1988 and, for most of that time, strug­gled with under­fund­ing, lengthy back­logs and per­son­nel shortages.

Part of the under­fund­ing was offi­cials’ inabil­ity to recoup hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in unpaid balances.

For years, the sys­tem annu­ally gen­er­ated less than $700,000, or half the fees assessed, accord­ing to Ken Winter, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Mississippi Association of Chiefs of Police.

During that period, evi­dence pro­cess­ing took months, some­times nearly a year. One police chief told the Associated Press it took “almost a year” for the state lab to process evi­dence in an attempted-poisoning case.

“It was hec­tic,” said Jim King, Metcalfe police chief.

The AP also quoted Henry McCullum, Jefferson Davis County sher­iff, as say­ing the faster evi­dence is processed, the bet­ter it is for law enforcement.

“It helps us to pur­sue the case quicker and get it ready for trial,” McCullum said.

A $1 mil­lion bud­get increase in 2006 allowed offi­cials to expand the lab by about 40 posi­tions, nearly dou­bling the staff.

As of last month, 75 per­cent of requests for analy­sis were 90 days old, said Sam Howell, cur­rent direc­tor of Mississippi crime labs.

“Backlog is no longer an issue at the lab,” Howell said.

Neither is get­ting munic­i­pal­i­ties to pay up.

The lab now charges a flat fee of $50 per case. The excep­tion is for DNA analy­sis, which costs $100.

Howell expects to gen­er­ate about $1 mil­lion in fees this year.

Arizona labs may not fare as well.

Last month, Dale Wiebusch, leg­isla­tive asso­ciate for Arizona League of Cities and Towns, sent an e-mail to city man­agers say­ing they shouldn’t pay the fees until con­sti­tu­tional issues can be settled.

Wiebusch said the law’s pas­sage may have been uncon­sti­tu­tional because any state rev­enue hike must be approved by a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate. The same goes for the insti­tu­tion of any new state fee.

However, the bill that allowed the DPS to impose fees for foren­sic work had passed by one vote in both chambers.

Wiebusch said the league is research­ing the issue. “We like to fig­ure out whether or not this is actu­ally some­thing that does require a two-thirds vote,” he said.

Lawmakers could repeal the sec­tion of ses­sion law deal­ing with the crime lab or sim­ply “find a dif­fer­ent fund­ing mech­a­nism,” Wiebusch said, “although they’re kind of run­ning out of places to take money.”

For now, even with­out funds com­ing in, DPS offi­cials “think that essen­tially we have a man­date to pro­vide the ser­vice,” Case said. “If we have to ratchet down ser­vices, that could have an effect on cases.”