More troopers a waste

Ladies and gentlemen, today we offer an example of government waste, Kulongoski fiscal irresponsibility, power politics, public apathy and media laziness. It’s quite the combination.

But first, a warning: the writer of this blog is snarling and biased, in need of a shower and second cup of strong black coffee, listening to hounds outside barking over crescendoes of Pink Floyd at deer far too close to the electric fence, and some time today wants to fire up 427 cubic inches of aluminum block V8 and run enough NOISE through the straight pipes to put ripples in the Pacific or shake a small slide of rock down the snowy side of Mt. Jefferson outside the door. Okay? Are we on the same page?

In today’s Oregonian (read it here), reporter Elizabeth Suh wrote that “In Gov. Ted Kulongoski's proposed budget, he recommends funding 139 more patrol troopers so that the state police can return to patrolling the entire state 24 hours a day. The Legislature's budget proposes funding 100 more patrols.”

We can’t find in Suh’s lazy little article how much this will cost, what the current staffing is, or any other meaningful information.

Instead, she mindlessly quotes the OSP, which spoon feeds her factoids: “In October, state police officials issued a report comparing patrol trooper levels nationwide. They found that with 254 patrol troopers, Oregon had the lowest staffing level in the country: about seven per 100,000 population.”

This would be sloppy journalism if it were journalism, but it doesn’t qualify.

So, let’s grab a shovel and do just a rough excavation, because this is a blog, not an article in the state’s major daily. Live with it.

The OSP claims on its web site it has 322 sworn patrol officers, 38 professional positions, for a total of 360. For the 2005-2007 biennium, patrol funds are $84,726,605 out of a total budget of $519,128,681, though the OSP reports that of that half-billion, $193,099,576 are Federal “pass-through” funds and do not support OSP programs.

So, if Kulongoski adds about 30 percent more patrol troopers, what will it cost? Let’s take the easy way out and just add 30% to the existing patrol budget. This will probably overstate the actual amount, since newly added troopers will not make (yet) as much as retiring troopers, and different shifts might use the same car. And let’s pick a number, say 85%, and say that labor is 85% of the cost of the patrol program.

So, if we currently spend $84,726,605 per biennium on patrol troopers, and 85% of that is for labor, we spend $72,017,614. If we increase that by about a third, we get $95,783,426. so we will spend about $23,765,812 more for the new patrols.

Another way to do the math is to divide the patrol budget of $84,726,605 by the number of personnel, 360. That gives us an eye-opener: $235,351 per person. WOW!

And if we again multiply that by the troopers added (let’s use 120), and mix in our 85% payroll modifier, we get $24,005,871.

Close enough. Now to the next question. What are we going to get for our fresh $24 million?

We assert the following: Nothing. Oregonians will not benefit from this expenditure. There is no hard evidence anywhere that we have been able to find, that putting one more OSP trooper on the road, let alone somewhere between 100 and 139 of them, will improve public safety.

The evidence, though awkward, is to the contrary: At the same time the number of troopers per “mile driven” has gone down, the number of accidents per mile driven also decreased. So one could argue, (we won’t) that reducing the number of troopers reduces the number of accidents. OSP has used that kind of false logic in promoting their expansion.

We wish reporter Suh had asked the OSP when they gave her that stupid report about having the lowest staffing in the country whether we had also had the lowest safety in the country. But she didn’t.

Which leads to the final issue: Where else could we spend that $24 million that would do some good? Well, the Sisters School District could use some money. A half-million would make a pretty good addition to teaching staff, and Sisters is better off than John Day or Burns or the Wallowas.

Central Oregon is going to be out of jail space soon. Gresham could use some help attracting investment to their high tech business parks. Mill City could use some help that would create a job or two. I bet Lakeview would be better able to use a couple of deputies. We need technology to get some of the slash burned along the highway east of Mt. Jefferson turned into diesel fuel. More importantly, that is at $24 million more every two years, so over 10 years, we are talking about $100 million more just for the increase proposed today.

For that, we are going to get 120 men and women in funny hats and fast cars pointing laser guns paid for by insurance companies at the license plates of citizens trying to get somewhere safely but over the speed limit.

What a waste. A waste of reporting, of government, of time, of money.

Time for coffee.

Adding State Troopers is a waste

Republicans and Democrats, in the House and the Senate as well as the governor, are on the band wagon for more State Troopers on the road.

That's too bad, because it will cost millions of dollars. And so far, we have not seen one shred of hard evidence that there will be ANY benefit to Oregonians.

Nor have we seen the OSP budget opened up as part of this debate, a budget that has ranged from $250 million to more than $400 million over the last several biennium's.

How much do those troopers earn, on average? What is the salary range for troopers driving Mustangs down Interstate 5? What does a Lane County deputy make for the same work? How many teachers could we hire for the same amount?

Kulongoski torpedoed a study that would have provided answers to some of these questions. We think he did so because facts would have made it inconvenient to do what he wanted to do. He prefers hand-wringing and anecdote.

The police union organized a rally in Salem on Tuesday (is it just me, or do rallies, be they of cops or of students, seem like mob politics?).

Edward Walsh of "The Oregonian" reports that the Oregon State Police Officers' Association organized the rally because "Oregon today has fewer than half the state troopers it did 20 years ago but double the population ... about 310 troopers now patrol the state's major highways instead of the 665 troopers who handled that task in the 1980s."

So what?

During the same time, the number of accidents per mile driven has declined, as has the number of fatalities per mile. Using the twisted logic used elsewhere by the OSP that we won’t go into today, this would appear to prove that fewer cops means fewer wrecks.

Of course that's not true, but it does balance the non-argument of the "fewer troopers today" canard. Repeat: there is no evidence that more troopers handing out speeding tickets makes Oregon safer. To that end, cell phones have done more than cops.

There is a role for the OSP. We need more state crime labs, OSP should be investigating other police departments for corruption, they should be running a tougher standards and training program (that appears to have been tucked into another budget). And yes, they need to guard the governor and capitol.

This they could probably do with last year’s budget. They just need to take a few more troopers off Interstate 5. Putting more troopers on the road is a waste of money better spent putting more teachers in the classroom.