02/20/2009 - Mrvan seeks aid for police academy with new fee on BMV transactions (Gary Post-Tribune)

Mrvan seeks aid for police academy with new fee on BMV transactions

February 20, 2009

By John Byrne
Post-Tribune staff writer

INDIANAPOLIS -- Northwest Indiana's law enforcement leaders asked a Senate committee Thursday to provide long-term funding for the region's police training academy.

Sen. Frank Mrvan's bill would add a $1 fee to every transaction with the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles, with the $10.5 million or so raised annually to be shared by the state's law enforcement academies.

Local police departments send officers to the academies for specialized training. The main campus is in Plainfield, but there is also a facility at Indiana University Northwest in Gary, along with other sites around the state.

Northwest Indiana's branch of the academy is on particularly shaky footing. A state subsidy of $150,000 per year will end this June, cutting 35 percent of the school's $430,000 budget.

The Lake County campus serves about 60 police departments in the five counties in the northwest corner of the state, training about 1,800 officers per year, according to Timothy Wardrip, executive director of the Northwest Indiana Law Enforcement Academy.

In addition to the state money, the Northwest Indiana branch also gets a penny in turnstile tax each time somebody enters one of Lake County's four casinos.

The tax raises about $176,000 each year for the academy.

But without an additional funding source, the academy won't be able to remain solvent after June, Wardrip said.

Lake County Sheriff Roy Dominguez told the Senate Appropriations Committee the academy creates more confident, better-informed officers, and helps save cities and counties money in lawsuits.

"When a lawsuit is brought forward, lawyers will often look at the training, or lack of training, of the officers involved," Dominguez said.

And Porter County Sheriff David Lain urged the committee to hold public safety standards above other requests in the fight for scarce public dollars.

"I know it's very difficult to pick and choose," Lain said. "I think public safety is something we in the state must keep a high priority."

Appropriations Committee Chairman Sen. Luke Kenley said he wants more information on the numerous small funding sources subsidizing the academies around the state. He also requested data on how many officers each campus trains, to devise a formula to distribute the BMV revenue.

Kenley did not allow a vote on Mrvan's bill, but said he would work to incorporate the ideas from the proposal into the state budget.