For the week of November 19 - 24, 2003

Price of penny-pinching

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For the past two months, Blaine County faced the consequences of the state’s romance with a starve-the-beast tax-cut strategy.

When the county needed the help from the state forensics lab to examine DNA and firearms evidence in the double murder of Alan and Diane Johnson of Bellevue, it couldn’t get it.

For eight excruciating weeks, the valley waited for an arrest in the case.

For eight weeks, the Blaine County Sheriff’s office and the Idaho State Police could say nothing except that nothing would be done until testing was complete.

For eight weeks, despite the assurances of the county sheriff, the valley was left to wonder if a murderer was at large—or getting a whopping head start on law enforcement.

Why the wait? The state forensics lab is shorthanded because the Idaho Legislature didn’t increase funding enough to pay salaries competitive with other states. Evidence in the case was finally sent to the FBI and private labs.

In June, Idaho State Police lost chief ballistics expert, Chet Park, to a higher paying job at a private lab. The lab paid more than double the expert’s $41,000 Idaho salary.

Another ballistics technician left a year earlier for a similar job in Washington in which his salary increased from $37,000 to $54,000.

DNA and ballistics experts don’t grow on trees, and they’re not cheap—unless they’re inexperienced.

Lab officials say they need $220,000 to create competitive salaries and stop the brain drain. Their pleas likely will fall on deaf ears when the Legislature convenes in January. House Appropriations Committee co-chair Maxine Bell, R-Jerome, was quoted as saying the lab’s funding is "in-line" with other state agencies.

Apparently Rep. Bell thinks that like a drowning man the lab is fine because it’s still breathing—even though it is thrashing and gasping for breath.

The investigation in Blaine County was not the first or the only investigation that has been held up because of understaffing. An investigation of a shootout at the Boise Airport was delayed over the summer.

The forensics lab is just one of the many casualties of the Legislature’s misguided two-year-old income tax cuts that collided with a weak economy. Last year, the Legislature staved off red ink only by increasing the state’s sales tax by a penny.

If the state lets the beast get much thinner, Idahoans will find more and more state agencies so under-funded and understaffed that services they have come to expect and depend on will disappear.

Then, perhaps, the budget cutters will be happy. The only question left then will be: Are Idaho voters happy, too?

 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.