FINAL BILL REPORT

                      HB 2214

PARTIAL VETO

                                C 26 L 91 E1

Brief Description:  Defining criminal justice purposes for the municipal criminal justice assistance account.

By Representatives Haugen, Prince, Wang and Edmondson; by request of Task Force on City/County Finances.

House Committee on Local Government

Background:  In June 1990, the Legislature provided state funding and increased local taxing authority to expand local government criminal justice efforts.  The legislation contained language restricting the purposes for which the money could be used and required local governments to continue their current levels of criminal justice funding.

The Task Force on City and County Finances heard testimony regarding problems experienced during implementation and developed corrective legislation for the 1991 Session.  This legislation provided administrative relief to local governments, particularly small counties and cities, by easing the definition of criminal justice purposes to cover certain civil activities when the civil activities were a minor part of the cost.  This eliminated the requirement that in every situation criminal and civil costs had to be separated for determining eligibility for state reimbursement.  Many local jurisdictions did not have accounting and reporting systems to meet this requirement.  Also addressed was the problem of determining a workable benchmark for monitoring the supplanting of funds (1989 actual criminal justice operating expenditures) and the addition of guidelines for expenditures that could be excluded from the benchmark calculation.

Local taxing authority was provided for Yakima County.  Also, the city of Seattle's Municipal Court Information System was to be integrated with the State Administrator for the Courts' District and Municipal Information System (DISCIS).  Failure to integrate and use the state system by a certain date would result in the withholding of state allocations of criminal justice funding.

The governor vetoed language requiring the Seattle/state information system integration.  The governor's veto also eliminated language pertaining to the easing of the criminal justice purposes definition and the establishment of the 1989 benchmark from the section of law dealing with allocations to high crime cities. 

Summary:  Current law is amended so that the definition of criminal justice purposes and the benchmark determination for high crime cities are made consistent with all the other sections of law governing state allocations of criminal justice monies to local governments.

In addition, any city with a population exceeding 400,000, currently Seattle, must have an agreement with the Office of the Administrator of the Courts to utilize the District and Municipal Court Information System (DISCUS).  If no agreement exists by January 1, 1992, Seattle shall not receive any further distributions from the Municipal Criminal Justice Assistance Account until such an agreement is in place.  City municipal court system integration with DISCUS must be operational and in use no later than January 1, 1994.  The implementation date is contingent upon funds being made available by the Legislature.

Votes on Final Passage:

First Special Session

House 93    0

Senate   45    1     (Senate amended)

House 94    0     (House concurred)

Effective:     July 2, 1991

Partial Veto Summary:  Section 2 concerning the integration of court information systems is eliminated because the governor felt it inappropriate to withhold critically needed criminal justice funds to effect an agreement between two public entities.