Vancouver Police Chief Clifford Cook was correct Monday when he told city councilors that the department must wean itself off federal grants. This is the right approach for several reasons:
The source of the money is unreliable. Several years ago, before the economy tanked, many people never considered the pipelines from distant wells in Washington, D.C., might dry up. But as Cook said Monday, these dollars are far from guaranteed. The economic outlook is as bleak as are any hopes for an increasingly contentious Congress to collaborate on creative budget solutions. Hoping and praying for money from destitute, fighting politicians is no way to run any city department, let alone one responsible for protecting the public.
Federal grants usually are loaded with requirements that place unreasonable constraints on city finance departments. In the case of the current $2.6 million, three-year grant from the Department of Justice to pay for 10 Vancouver police officers, the city must fully fund the positions for an additional year, whether it wants to or not. That means almost a million bucks in increased annual spending, and with no new revenue anticipated, the city will have to cut a million bucks from departments it might not want to reduce.
These decisions should be made locally, not via the ultimatums of federal grants.
Federal grants for public-safety departments are attractive at first, but ultimately they lead to staffing predicaments that managers don’t need or deserve. Cook and other department leaders have been moving officers in and out of school resource programs, auto theft and gang-fighting detective divisions and other areas. Such erratic funding conditions erode these divisions’ effectiveness.