Drug task force funding will be decided in June

Drug task forces in the state will receive 2009 allocations which are currently in the bank and 2010 allocations yet to come, but the money must be budgeted to keep the seven forces in operation for two years. That is the recommendation from a committee that the Montana Board of Crime Control will vote on in June, said Mike Anderson, the board's chairman. The committee met last week with task force representatives in Helena to discuss funding for the forces. In 2008, the task forces absorbed a 72 percent cut in their funding from the federal level, which comes from the Justice Assistance Grant. They were forced to use accrued forfeiture funds to finance operations and relied heavily on local support, Anderson said. $1.5 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment funds was used in 2009 to fund the task forces, but it was understood that it was one-time money, Anderson said. The $829,800 allocated from the JAG grant for the Montana task forces went to the bank. Anderson said that the task forces had requested to gradually wean themselves off of federal funds to prevent having a drastic cut in funding again and having to scramble to survive. Now the task forces will have to take the money and be able to make it last for two years. "If they truly want to do this over a Two year contract, then they need to manage the money," Anderson said. Pete Federspiel, supervisor of the Tri-Agency Safe Trails Drug Task Force, said that the money will be spread over the two years to continue the task forces operations in Hill, Blaine, Liberty, Chouteau and Judith Basin counties, as well as Rocky Boy's and Fort Belknap Indian reservations. To help with the budget, the sheriff's office and the police department will ask the city and county to fund the officers that serve on the task force from their offices. "They'll try to at least get a portion of those personnel wages covered," he said. If the officers are not funded, "we will pretty much deplete our forfeiture funds in our first year," he said. On average, those funds range from $30,000 to $50,000 a year. For the second year of the budget, if the officers aren't funded, "we're not sure what we'll do then," he said, "because we don't have enough money to cover everything for that year." Most of the budget is tied up in personnel, he said, and there is little that can be done to trim it. "We pretty much run on a bare-bones budget as it is," he said. That the crime control board is addressing the issue before the city and county go into their budget cycles is a good thing, he said. "So hopefully the city and county can work with us enough to keep us going," he added.