After seven months of negotiations, a new $503 million anti-crime block grant to local governments was approved in the appropriations agreement for FY96, along with $1.4 billion for the Community-Oriented Poolicing Services (COPS) Program. In addition, the following specific allocations were also contained in the Justice Department’s appropriation:
$175 million for the Violence Against Women program
$405 million for prison and jail construction
$500 million to states and counties for the criminal alien assistance program, and
$475 million for the Edward Byrne Memorial state and local law enforcement formula grant program.
These funds were part of a $16.3 billion appropriation to the Department of Justice, a 17.8 percent increase over the FY95 funding level.
President Clinton had vetoed two previous appropriation bills based in part on the elimination of funding for the COPS Program. The president campaigned on a pledge to add 100,000 community police officers at the local level.
The new block grant gives counties flexibility in the use of the funds, including hiring and training additional law enforcement officers and support personnel, establishing and operating drug courts, enhancing the adjudication process for violent offenders (including violent juvenile offenders), establishing multijurisdictional task forces, and implementing community-based crime prevention programs.
In addition to including drug courts as a permitted program under the block grant, the local government block grant contains a special $18 million set aside for Drug Courts to be used at the discretion of Attorney General Janet Reno.
Unlike the COPS Program, which requires a 25 percent local match the first year, a 50 percent match the second year, and a 75 percent match the third year, the law enforcement block grant requires only a 10 percent “in-kind” or cash match contribution.
Although NACo has strongly supported the concept of direct, flexible block grant funding to local governments, the association has been very critical of the block grant formula which remains in the legislation and is generally unfavorable to counties. Congressional leaders plan to introduce a technical amendment during the next several months to further address the formula disparity issue.
While the appropriations bill did not change the formula, it did a safety valve (the Chabot-Lofgren amendment) to protect counties from major disparities in the formula.
NACo has obtained information from the General Accounting Office (GAO) which suggests that the safety valve could be activated for more than one-half of the block grant funds, affecting 2,201 jurisdictions.
Under the Chabot-Lofgren amendment (co-authored by former county commissioner, Representative Steve Chabot {R-Ohio} and former county supervisor, Representative Zoe Lofgren {D-Calif.}, if a city receivesd twice as much as a county or collectively receive four times as much as a county and if the county possesses major court or correctional responsibility, the state’s attorney general would have the authority to declare that “such allocation is likely to threaten the efficient administration of justice.” It would then be up to the affected city or cities and the county to reach a mutually acceptable agreement on the distribution of the funds. The jurisdictions would then submit a joint application “for the aggregate of funds allocated to such units of local government.”
According to Rep. Chabot, “It would be up to the city and the county to work together to come up with an agreement, because otherwise ... neither would get the money, so it is definitely to their advantage to come up with an agreement. We do not want to dictate exactly what that agreement needs to be, but it is in both of their interests” to resolve the problem.
The Chabot-Lofgren amendment requires that the joint application specify the purposes for which such funds are to be used. The amendment also permits units of local government to “establish a joint advisory board” to guide the distribution process.
An earlier amendment, introduced by Rep. Lofgren, would have potentially activated the safety valve if there were any disparity between city and county allocations, but the amendment was rejected by Representative Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Crime.
When Rep. Chabot also voiced concern over the formula, McCollum urged Lofgren and Chabot to try to work out a compromise proposal, which was ultimately approved as the Chabot-Lofgren amendment.
In a related development at a recent appropriation hearing Assistant Attorney General Laurie Robinson announced that the Justice Department would create a new office to administer the program, but it will take five or six months before funds would be distributed, she said.