Talking About Consolidation of Law Enforcement Saving Millions

Under a 2013 law, state officials have until January to combine 12 statewide police agencies under the new Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, or ALEA. But instead of cutting the state's law enforcement costs by $35 million — the original plan — the state is likely to plow its savings back into hiring of more state troopers.

"You may not see any savings in terms of actual dollars going to the General Fund," said state Sen. Del Marsh, R-Anniston. "What you're likely to see instead is savings in terms of improved service."

Marsh, the president pro tempore of the Alabama Senate, was the driving force behind the effort to merge the state's law enforcement agencies under a single aegis.

Alabama now has 1,448 employees working in a range of statewide law enforcement agencies, from well-known institutions such as the State Troopers and the State Bureau of Investigations (formerly the Alabama Bureau of Investigations) to more obscure agencies such as the Marine Police and Forestry Law Enforcement. Until this year, those agencies operated under several different state departments.

Marsh and other supporters of police consolidation wanted to eliminate that duplication. Putting all statewide police under a single agency, they argued, would reduce spending on human resources and information technology, and would eventually trim the rolls of law enforcement employees as duplicated senior officials retired, without being replaced.

Marsh projected an annual savings between $25 million and $35 million, a boon to the state's budgeteers in an age of budget shortfalls. State officials expect a $200 million gap next year in the $1.8 billion General Fund budget, a crisis that comes after years of stopgap measures to balance the books.

As the January 1 deadline to unify the agencies approaches, however, state officials are pushing any expectations of savings further down the road.

“There’s no way to determine what the cost savings will be at this point,” said ALEA spokeswoman Anna Morris. “There has to be some time that passes before we see what sort of savings will occur.”

Trooper shortage

The restructuring effort ran into trouble almost immediately because there was already a shortage of state police.

ALEA officials say Alabama now has 291 troopers on patrol, about one-third as many as the state needs according to a study by the University of Alabama’s Center for Advanced Public Safety.

Here and there, post-recession budget austerity was visible in ways the public could see. In December 2010, the state put ABI investigators in patrol cars to double as state troopers for holiday traffic enforcement. A freeze on new hires left the state unable to fill 21 civilian examiner positions in drivers' license offices, leading to long waits for licenses in some counties, Morris said.

ALEA officials are now considering a new plan. Sixty-seven sworn law enforcement officers work in the state's driver's license division, Morris said, and sworn officers are more expensive to hire than civilians. So state officials are mulling a plan to put those officers on patrol and hire civilian workers to replace them.

The statewide consolidation could put still more officers on patrol. Advocates of the restructuring have long hoped to eliminate high-level administrative positions that are duplicated in multiple agencies. But now, instead of saving that money, they're looking for where to spend it.

"If you have someone in the accounting department who retires, and that individual costs you $80,000 a year, for that you might be able to hire two troopers," Marsh said.

Retirement ready

As recently as October, in pre-election debates, Marsh quoted the $35-million-a-year savings projection, while also noting that the restructuring could put more troopers on the road.

“In public safety alone, through the consolidation of public safety initiative, we’ll save $35 million a year,” he said during a debate last month in Alexandria. “I’ve met with (ALEA director) Spencer Collier, the commissioner, and because of those savings there will be 100 troopers put back on the road without an increase in tax dollars.”

Actual savings from the plan are difficult to measure. The restructuring plan became a wild card in Alabama's 2014 and 2015 budgets, with law enforcement agencies shrinking, some of them to nothing, while a new agency, ALEA, appeared as a budget line for the first time. State officials are reluctant to offer estimates on the total spending for the agencies that, next year, will be under ALEA.

In 2012, a panel commissioned by Marsh concluded that a consolidation would yield as much as $32 million in annual savings, but that number was the panel’s most optimistic figure. Much of the money saved, according to that study, would come from attrition among workers who are eligible to retire.

Still, state law enforcement officials say they can’t force those eligible retirees into retirement. Spencer Collier, the state’s new law enforcement director, said his agency is expecting to see big savings in other areas, including the combining of motor pools and radio systems — all of which would free funds to hire more officers.

Collier said he does expect the overall cost of law enforcement to go down, eventually, but the trooper shortage will be addressed first.

“Getting more troopers out on the road is our first priority,” Collier said.