Topeka — The Kansas Bureau of Investigation would have more personnel and money to fight methamphetamine trafficking under a budget endorsed Thursday by a House committee.
The KBI's budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1 would actually fall by 3.2 percent to a total $18.8 million. But that total would include $667,000 in federal money which the House Appropriations Committee specifically approved for hiring 13 new employees for anti-meth efforts.
Some committee members were troubled because the federal government has committed to providing the money only for two years. After that, the state might have to pick up the cost.
At the insistence of Chairman Kenny Wilk, R-Lansing, the committee added a statement to the KBI budget that if the federal funds dried up, the state would not be committed to continuing the extra spending. Wilk also made sure that the new employees would be outside the state's civil service.
"This is how we grow government," Wilk said. "And we do it with the best of intentions."
The committee endorsed several other public safety-related budgets for the 2002 fiscal year, including $84.2 million for the Juvenile Justice Authority and its correctional centers in Atchison, Beloit, Larned and Topeka. Spending on juvenile justice would increase $862,000, or about 1 percent.
For the Kansas Highway Patrol, the panel approved a budget of $52.2 million, up $2.8 million or 5.6 percent from the current fiscal year. The increase would finance Gov. Bill Graves' proposal to raise troopers' pay by 8 percent.
If committee members wondered how to pay for the new KBI employees in the long run, they had no questions about the problem that methamphetamine presents for Kansas law enforcement. The state has become one of the nation's biggest homes for meth labs, and law enforcement agencies busted 702 in 2000, up 37 percent from 511 in 1999.
Because methamphetamine is produced from toxic chemicals, the labs represent an environmental problem as well as a crime problem for communities.
"We have to attack this," said Rep. Bill Feuerborn, D-Garnett.
The proposed budget would allow the KBI to hire six new agents, five scientists and two crime analysts. Law enforcement agencies have complained that the KBI's laboratory is slow in processing evidence, even to the point that some meth cases have to be dropped.
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