State Patrol must be budget priority

Gazette Editorial Board

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The Iowa State Patrol sends aircraft into duty to get a better view of the big picture. And it's a different kind of big picture that explains why the patrol's air wing has been shrinking in recent years.

An air wing that had 16 planes in 1996 is now down to seven, The Gazette reported last Sunday. Along with a drop in the number of aircraft comes a decline in the number of hours in the air, and the number of highway citations issued with the help of aerial surveillance.

But the air wing is on the same glide path as state trooper staffing overall. Downward.

“It is a bigger picture,” said Darin Snedden, a trooper from Mount Vernon who is president of Iowa State Troopers Association. “All of the special units in the state patrol have been shrinking, along with the state trooper numbers in our state as a whole. With the trooper numbers dwindling, that obviously has repercussions back on the specialty units.”

Along with the air wing, other special units are feeling the budget pinch, including vehicle theft, motor carrier safety and safety education.

At the same time, the number of sworn, road-assigned troopers stands at 362. That's down from a high of 452 in 2000. In 2004, the number of troopers dropped below 400 and has never fully recovered.

“The drop in the number of state troopers is really dramatic,” said Sen. Rob Hogg, a member of a joint House-Senate budget panel that overseas State Patrol spending.

This year, after considerable Statehouse wrangling, the Legislature boosted the Department of Public Safety's budget by

$1.6 million. But that's only enough to hold staffing at current levels.

Seven new troopers are receiving academy training, Snedden said. But with an average loss rate of 10 to 15 troopers each year because of retirements, replacements aren't coming fast enough. “We're not digging out of the hole,” Snedden said.

The budget issues are no mystery. Tax revenues flowing into the state must be spread out over hundreds of agencies and programs, from prisons to human services to public schools. And for the State Patrol, assigned to cover the state's roads and the skies above, high fuel prices have taken a severe budgetary bite.

Clearly, public safety, including the State Patrol, falls within what most Iowans consider to be the basic duties of state government. Making sure that such basic functions are adequately funded should be the Legislature's first priority as it builds a budget. And that means making trooper staffing a priority.

Whether that means adding troopers or aircraft or any number of needed tools and resources should be decided by State Patrol administrators in consultation with lawmakers. From the air, ground or any vantage point, the big picture of the patrol's status is alarming.

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