City, county seek law enforcement money

The Community Safety Initiative, a proposed quarter-cent sales tax increase for Greene County residents, would raise at least $10 million in revenue in Year 1 of the program. The money would fund staff increases for the Police and Sheriff’s departments and the E-911 system, as well as a new crime lab and an early childhood education program. Half of the tax – one-eighth of a cent – would sunset after five years.

Last year’s proposed Law Enforcement Sales Tax had several significant opponents, including Greene County Sheriff Jack Merritt and Springfield Mayor Tom Carlson. But city and county officials are presenting a united front this time around.

“We feel like this is a collaborative effort – the city and the county are both supporting it, the sheriff is also supporting it, as well as our own chief of police,” said Evelyn Honea, Springfield’s assistant city manager.

Merritt said he supports the new initiative because it’s clearer than last year’s proposal.

“I desperately needed the funding (the 2004 proposal) would have provided and the benefits for my officers. At the same time, I so disagreed with the way it was presented – I thought it was deceptive, and I could not get out and support something like that,” he said. “This time … you can see where the money’s going, and I feel comfortable with that.”

Merritt said he thinks the department’s decision to begin releasing low-risk offenders while deciding whether to file charges, rather than holding them overnight, also will help to alleviate jail overcrowding.

Not everyone, though, is convinced.

Michael Schilling, Missouri State University professor and a former state representative, said the jail does not need more money – it needs to spend more wisely.

“There’s runaway spending on the jail,” Schilling said, citing the findings of a consultant brought in by the county in 2004 to assess how to deal with the overcrowding issue. That consultant, who was paid nearly $200,000 for his work, made a return trip to southwest Missouri last month, scolding the county for not following through with his recommendations.

“The county hasn’t been heeding the advice of its own consultant,” Schilling added. “When are they going to wake up? How many tax proposals do we have to reject before they get it?”

CSI elements

One of the key elements of the bill touted by proponents is the early childhood development portion. About $2.8 million a year is earmarked to provide 50 resource facilitators, one at each elementary school in the county, and an Early Childhood Resource Center, which would act as a single stop for various early childhood programs.

The program attempts to “break the cycle of crime,” as brochures supporting the initiative put it, beginning in early childhood.

Another element of the bill is a new crime lab, to be housed in the old L.E. Cox building, 440 E. Tampa, which the city acquired in December.

The bill allocates approximately $600,000 a year for five years to renovate the space, which will then be run and staffed by the Missouri Highway Patrol. This could lead to faster resolution of local cases awaiting state lab results.

The bill also gives $250,000 in Year 1 to fund three or four additional staff for the 911 system. It’s a move that County Commissioner Harold Bengsch said will help stop the financial “hemorrhaging” at the emergency reponse facility.

He added that local officials are still lobbying to change state law to allow for charges on cell phone users to fund the system; Missouri is one of only two states that does not allow such a charge.

Schilling said he could support the crime lab and 911 staff initiatives if they weren’t being used to “mask” the spending for the jail. As for the childhood program, Schilling isn’t sure.

“Sure there’s trouble with kids, but we have Head Start, we have Caring Communities, and we have Parents as Teachers,” he said. “What happened to those programs? Why aren’t they enough? We haven’t heard any evidence of that.”

Economic investment

City and county officials say they have information to back their initiative.

They point to a study by Art Rolnick and Rob Grunewald of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, which says that for each dollar invested in high-quality preschool or child-care programs, there is a return of $17 from decreased costs for schools, lower crime rates and increased salaries for those students when they enter the adult work force.

“These (rates) are very high compared to other economic development initiatives that are typically proposed, such as luring companies into areas with tax incentives,” Grunewald said days before he was to speak in Springfield at the Oct. 28 meeting of the Ozarks Regional Economic Partnership. “They’re also (favorable) to private investments including the stock market.”

Grunewald’s presentation, “Early Childhood Development: Economic Development with a High Public Return,” was to tell of the research and economic importance of investing in early childhood education.

Randell Wallace, chairman of the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, said the chamber wholeheartedly supports the initiative because of its balance between crime prevention and law enforcement.

“It’s very important to the business community to have a low crime rate,” he said. “But from a business standpoint, crime prevention and early childhood intervention makes a lot of sense as opposed to merely treating the problem after it’s already happened. We think these measures are consistent with positions the chamber has taken on education and work force measures in the past.”