LOCAL LAB ON LIST OF POSSIBLE CLOSURES

FLORENCE - The regional forensic science laboratory in Florence is in
jeopardy of closure from a too familiar problem - lack of state funding.

After digging out from a backlog of cases, the state Department of Forensic
Sciences is again planning to cut its services because of the drop in
funding, which equates regionally to about 60 percent.

State Forensics Director J.C. Upshaw Downs said his agency's budget will be
about $2.25 million short for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, and cuts
will have to be made. Downs, who resigned this week after more than two
decades in the forensics field, will be gone as of Sept. 1.

The primary reason for the funding shortfall is less money coming in from
penalties paid in drunken driving cases and criminal court cases.

"Unfortunately, we're funded by crime, and when crime goes down, our
revenues go down," the director said. "It's not the fault of anyone or any
particular person."

Downs said the savings would come in by having less buildings open.

Florence lab Director Selwyn Jones said his laboratory is earning its keep,
and he doesn't want to leave.

The Florence lab mostly handles drug cases for law enforcement agencies
throughout northwest Alabama.

"By not being here, there would definitely be a slow down in efficiency of
all the agencies that depend on us," Jones said. "They'd be forced to take
everything to Huntsville."

Florence police Deputy Chief Tony Logan said Jones and others at the area
office have provided invaluable support for area law enforcement.

"We are seeing an increased amount of crystal meth and other drugs in this
part of north Alabama," Logan said. "Taking away the lab here will result
in a further backlog of cases."

Huntsville Forensics Lab Director Roger Morrison said satellite labs like
the one in Florence are very valuable.

"It makes it much easier to get the cases turned in to have the lab right
there and not have to travel for an hour-and-a-half one way," Morrison said.

In his 24 years in forensics, Morrison said he's seen plenty of cuts. And
he says it's difficult to recover from cuts because, "we're down now to
cutting out essentials."

Already, Morrison has a backlog of cases. Add Florence's cases and the
problem greatly intensifies.

"It's an even greater backlog created, and people would have to wait longer
and district attorneys would have to wait longer to get their cases to
court," Morrison said.

He said his operation won't only be faced with a greater workload, but
"we'd also be scaled back big-time."

"The people of Alabama have gotten a great deal from the crime laboratory
systems," he said. "We've stretched those dollars as much as they can be
stretched, and now we're being cut back to the point we can't do all the work."

Muscle Shoals police Chief Robert Evans said the cuts and the closure of
the Florence lab will have an impact on all law enforcement agencies,
especially those with small staffs of officers like in Cherokee,
Littleville and Leighton.

"You're looking at a shift being disrupted when one or two of those
officers have to take two and half hours out of an eight-hour shift to
drive evidence to Huntsville," Evans said.

"This isn't evidence you can put in the mail."

Evans said the cuts will create delays in getting cases to courts, and said
victims advocacy groups will "really get rightly up in arms when the
process slows down."

He said the closing of the Florence lab will create "a ripple ... that will
effect crime victims and their families, and that's the real tragedy here."

Downs has notified law enforcement officials across the state that
scale-back options may include:

- -- In addition to closing regional labs in Florence, those in Tuscaloosa,
Dothan and Auburn also would be closed, and employees from those four labs
transferred to labs in the state's four biggest cities.

- -- Stopping the transportation of bodies to state crime labs for tests and
turning over the task to local law enforcement agencies.

"That's a business we're not mandated to provide, but we've provided
historically," Downs said. "The department can't afford that generosity."

- -- Reducing personnel, which is the department's biggest expense, by up to
20 percent.

- -- Closing sections that investigate fingerprints, arsons, forged documents
and trace evidence in carpet fibers.

The Department of Forensic Sciences gets about half of its budget from the
state General Fund that is allocated by the Legislature. The department's
General Fund allocation is going up from $7.4 million this fiscal year to
$7.5 million next year.

The other half of the department's budget comes from federal grants and
from court fines and fees, such as a $100 charge on each drunken driving case.

Those sources of revenue are going down, which means the department's total
budget is dropping from nearly $16 million to $13.6 million.

Two years ago, the department was so strapped and so backlogged that Downs
threatened to close the doors to new cases.

But additional federal funding, including money from the National Forensic
Sciences Improvement Act, and $17.5 million from a state bond issue allowed
the department to keep its doors open, increase its employees from 149 to
179, and improve its labs, according to a report Downs gave the Legislature
a year ago.

Randy Hillman, director of the Alabama District Attorneys Association, said
he believes the system is "headed for a shutdown."

"Other states are on ad valorem taxes, which do not fluctuate with the
economy, nor does it follow the rise or fall in criminal acts," Hillman said.

TimesDaily Senior Editor Mike Goens and the Associated Press contributed to
this report.