Columnist Jeff German: Budget cuts hurt drug war

Friday, Feb. 18, 2005 | 11:04 a.m.

One thing we can always count on in Washington is that bad things will happen to good programs.

Back in December I told you about the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, a federally funded effort that has brought together and boosted the morale of law enforcement agencies in the local war on drugs.

The theory behind HIDTA -- which was created by Congress in 1988 but not established in Nevada until 2001 -- is to concentrate law enforcement resources in drug trafficking hot spots around the country.

Federal, state and local authorities here have been raving about the remarkable improvement in their working relationship and intelligence sharing in the last four years.

The stepped-up cooperation has helped slow the growth of high-grade methamphetamine trafficking in Las Vegas, now a major distribution center for ambitious Mexican drug lords.

Nevada HIDTA officials were looking to keep up the momentum and persuade Washington to double their $1.4 million annual budget, which funds nine joint task forces in Southern Nevada.

Then the Bush administration let its budget ax fall.

The law enforcement community was hit cold with an administration proposal to slash HIDTA's national budget of $228 million to $100 million.

Nevada is the lowest-funded of the 28 regional HIDTAs, which means it's last in line at the federal feeding trough and likely to feel the cuts the most.

"I'm at a loss for words to explain the impact this could have here," says a dejected Mike Hawkins, an ex-cop who serves as the executive director of Nevada HIDTA.

But Sheriff Bill Young, who chairs Nevada HIDTA's 13-member board, knows what's likely to happen if Congress approves the budget cuts.

Young says it could spell the "kiss of death" to one of the most highly acclaimed drug-fighting programs ever put into action in this state.

"It's a travesty," the sheriff says. "Doing away with this kind of joint effort makes no sense."

It's what you call a morale-buster for the cops in the trenches.

In its budget proposal, the Bush administration says HIDTA has grown well beyond its intended scope and lacks focus. The administration wants to take the program away from national drug czar John Walters and bring it under the control of the Justice Department.

The goal, a Justice Department spokesman says, is to make HIDTA more efficient on a national level and more compatible with the president's overall strategy of going after the world's top drug organizations.

But Hawkins, a retired Metro Police deputy chief, says that, if funds are taken away from HIDTA, it will create a major gap in the war on drugs and ultimately work against the president's lofty objective.

It will hurt law enforcement's ability to go after the mid- and upper-level drug traffickers who often lead authorities to the very international cartels the Bush administration wants to put out of business.

If there is any lack of focus in HIDTA, it's not occurring in the Las Vegas area, Hawkins insists.

"The teamwork and information-sharing is the best I've ever seen," he says.

And so now lawmen here and across the country have another fight on their hands.

Hawkins and Young say they expect there will be heavy lobbying in Washington to persuade Congress to reject the HIDTA cuts.

The hope is that Congress will have better vision than the president and remember why it created HIDTA.