Thursday, June 23, 2005 | 11:07 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- A special fund used mostly for battling drugs and gangs in Nevada has shriveled in recent years, an apparent victim of the federal government's ever-increasing emphasis on homeland security.
The Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, or JAG, has annually distributed money allocated by Congress through the Justice Department to the 50 states for crime fighting. The money is distributed to states by a formula based on population and crime statistics and then siphoned to a variety of programs.
In Nevada the cash has been used mostly for drug and gang task forces.
But the Nevada JAG budget is drying up, dropping from $4.3 million in fiscal year 2003 to $4.2 million in 2004 and $2.9 million for 2005. Congress is poised to approve just $1.5 million for the program this year, according to the office of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Other federally funded Justice Department programs are on the chopping block, too, said Sandra Mazy, the state administrator of the program money.
Money may be disappearing for federal programs in Nevada that take aim at gun violence in neighborhoods, help women victims of violence and treat prisoners who have drug addictions, Mazy said.
"It's all being funneled to homeland security," Mazy said. "I don't see how they can spend all they money they are getting. Obviously, it (homeland security) is necessary. But why so much? We've still got internal (crime) problems."
A spokeswoman for the Bureau of Justice Assistance, which administers the JAG program for the Justice Department, acknowledged that there has been a shift in Washington away from fighting common street crimes to battling terrorists.
"It's basically so we can target the limited resources we have," bureau spokeswoman Sheila Jerusalem said. "With our new emphasis on combatting terrorism, it's just a matter of priorities."
The Department of Homeland Security's budget has soared since 2003 when the department was created -- from about $30 billion to a proposed $41.1 billion next year -- as President Bush and Congress have sought program cuts.
As Congress continues to pour money into homeland security and the war in Iraq, lawmakers face tough choices about cutting domestic programs.
"This will, unfortunately, be a quandary for some time," said Tessa Hafen, spokeswoman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Still, Reid believes that Justice Department programs should not be slashed to pay for homeland security, she said.
"Sen. Reid feels strongly that both should be funded," Hafen said. "They have different goals."
The Justice Department has not neglected crime-fighting even as it, too, spends more on anti-terrorism programs, department spokesman John Nowacki said. He noted that the department is asking Congress for $1.5 billion for the next fiscal year for state and local governments. Most of that is for crime-fighting, although a component is earmarked for counter-terrorism programs.
"Combatting terrorism is the department's highest priority, but at the same time, we are still funding a number of important programs that assist state and local governments in efforts to fight crime," Nowacki said.
The JAG program is now less than 1 percent of the Justice Department crime-fighting money funneled to states, Nowacki said. But it offers a case study of how federal program cuts hurt cities, local officials said.
The JAG money has been extremely useful to Metro Police because it was being funneled to street-level programs, Metro Capt. Gary Schofield said. The JAG money is one of the only grant programs that allows Metro to buy new equipment, he said.
"Overall, it's been a great program because the money was not going for fluff stuff," Schofield said.
Last year Clark County received about $1.1 million of the $2.9 million state total for the JAG program. Clark County received money for 11 programs, including:
Last year about $2 million of the $2.9 million state total was used for narcotics task forces -- down nearly $900,000 from the previous year. About $370,000 was used for gang task forces, down about $115,000.
To further accommodate budget cuts last year, a $209,000 criminal justice records improvement project was scrapped, and the $143,000 budget for a drug treatment program was cut to $83,500.
It has not been determined how even deeper cuts would be handled in the next fiscal year. The focus will continue to be on the gang and drug task forces, Mazy said.
"There's not much money to fund anything else," she said.
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