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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Spokane County says drug task force is still in its budget

County officials are pushing back after Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich predicted last week the end of large-scale drug trafficking investigations due to budget woes.

Knezovich said Monday he’d met with county commissioners, who told him there was no additional money in the general fund available for the Spokane Regional Drug Task Force.

“This is one of those things that’s ‘stay tuned’ for now,” Knezovich said.

The county already allocated $174,000 for the task force in its 2015 budget. Knezovich said at a news conference last week the task force could close in June if the county, one of several funding sources for the group, did not dedicate more taxpayer dollars to its operations.

But the task force is also funded by money seized in operations against drug trafficking. Though that money has been dwindling in recent years, the county is hedging its bets that the seizure money will keep the task force’s doors open through 2016.

Commissioner Shelly O’Quinn said last week revenue cuts to the task force are coming from agencies other than the county, and that keeping it open will require strategic budgeting on Knezovich’s part.

“We’re not cutting funding,” O’Quinn said. “He’s losing federal funding.”

For the past three years, the county has paid a quarter of the salary costs for three deputies and an administrative assistant on the task force, according to the county budget office. Taxpayer dollars have also paid 75 percent of the salary for one of two deputy prosecutors assigned to the group, leading to a total public cost of roughly $180,000 annually to keep the task force’s doors open. Cash seized from drug busts, disbursed through the county budget office, has been used to pay about $665,000 in task force costs annually the past three years – a split that roughly translates to 25 percent taxes, 75 percent seized cash.

But money from drug seizures has been dwindling despite the major busts, budget officials say, and Knezovich had requested a bigger chunk of public change to make up for the shortfall. The task force will now have to dig into its reserves to finish out the year, and Knezovich said Monday there’s no assurance that money won’t dry up before the end of next year.

“They’re praying that it will last through the end of 2016,” Knezovich said.

The county isn’t the only entity responsible for funding the task force. But the federal program that has contributed much of the group’s bottom line over the past several years is under fire and the revenue stream may dry up for similar law enforcement agencies across the country.

Earlier this month, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced a plan to drastically scale back a federal money-sharing program that distributed cash taken from suspected criminals. Holder’s decision came after The Washington Post launched an investigation last year questioning the methods by which officers seized the money that was then shared with law enforcement agencies nationwide.

The reports show the task force’s expenses have grown considerably in the past several years. The group spent more than $30,000 on money to buy drugs for confidential informants, for example, in 2013. That same year an OxyContin bust garnered national recognition for the task force.

Knezovich said grant funding is being trimmed at all levels of government, including the state.

“Everybody at the elected level, at the policy level, is saying, ‘Drugs are not a big issue anymore,’ until you get that phone call from the neighborhood asking what about that drug house down the street,” Knezovich said.

Commissioner Al French said he agrees with Knezovich on the need to continue the task force.

“What that will look like, I think that’s something we’re still working on,” French said.

O’Quinn signaled that it may be difficult if the Sheriff’s Office leans on the county’s general fund for the bulk of the money to make up the task force’s budget shortfall. County commissioners will also have to navigate around a binding arbitration decision later this year that could award millions of dollars in back pay to deputies who have worked without a contract for several years.

“Money’s not growing on trees here,” she said.