FEDS TO REPAY COSTS LINKED TO DRUG CASES

El Paso and Texas' other counties along the Mexican border should soon
share a $10 million federal reimbursement for the burden of handling
federal drug cases, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said.

Hutchison's provision in the final spending bill passed by Congress
Friday provides the money to reimburse Texas county governments for
detention costs, court costs, courtroom technology, administrative
staff, the construction of holding spaces and the expense of providing
lawyers for indigent defendants.

The spending bill now only needs President Clinton's signature to
become law, and he has already indicated that he will do that.

For years Texas' prosecutors along the border were handling federal
drug cases as a favor to federal prosecutors. But that caseload and
the costs associated with it grew so burdensome that district
attorneys in the border counties on Oct. 1 declared that they would no
longer prosecute federal drug cases.

"We had to stop prosecuting those cases. We don't mind handling them,
but we won't do it for free," El Paso District Attorney Jaime Esparza
said.

If the border counties had not stopped prosecuting the cases the funds
needed to sustain their efforts would have had to have come from local
taxpayers. It cost El Paso taxpayers more than $2.5 million a year for
the 300 federal cases handled by El Paso prosecutors, and that does
not include the 500 other federal cases in Hudspeth County also
handled by Esparza's office, he said.

Hutchison said in a press release, "I share the anger of our border
prosecutors that the Justice Department has refused to use federal
funds Congress specifically provided for the full range of cost that
our border counties bear in trying federal drug cases. The federal
government has an obligation to assist these border communities, and I
am pleased that it is beginning to meet this responsibility."

Esparza said Saturday, however, that he is skeptical about how soon El
Paso will see its share of the $10 million.

This past summer, Hutchison obtained an emergency appropriation of $12
million, $3 million of which was earmarked for Texas. But the Justice
Department would not allow that money to be spent on detention costs,
which Esparza said account for 75 percent of the expense of most cases.

"Detention cost is a huge part of a lot of the cases," Esparza said.
"In El Paso County in 1999, 60 percent of the cases were for
nationals, so as a result, many of them didn't make bond. And so we
had to house them."

This time around, Hutchison's provision mandates that detention costs
be reimbursed.

"The Justice Department has found every excuse not to spend the $3
million I provided Texas for this purpose earlier this year,"
Hutchison said in a press release. "This bill provides more funds for
Texas and cuts through the bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo. The time for
excuses is over."