Drug Money Helps Libraries
New law makes funneling seized money to schools easier
By Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 2/1/2006
A new law signed in January by Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle will boost school library funds through an unusual source: money seized from drug busts.
Local law enforcement agencies always had the option of funneling funds collected from drug crimes to a Common School Fund, which loans money to municipalities and school districts and then applies the interest to K–12 public school libraries. Earnings from the fund—the sole source of funding for about 50 percent of the state’s school libraries—is distributed on an annual basis to school districts.
But the police rarely collected amounts smaller than $5,000 because the paperwork wasn’t worth the time. Plus, confiscated amounts larger than $10,000 were often funneled to federal agents, giving them 80 percent of forfeitures for their own agency and keeping 20 percent with local law enforcement units.
Tia Nelson, executive secretary of the Board of Commissioners of Public Land, which administers the Common School Fund says that until now, drug-related money donated to the Common School Fund has been miniscule. In 2005, for example, only $4,291 in cash from drug busts was collected through local law enforcement agencies and given to the fund. The new law is meant to offer an incentive to local law enforcement groups, allowing them to keep 70 percent of what they collect and contribute 30 percent to the Common School Fund. Still, Nelson is skeptical. “Even if the cash and property seized in a drug crime increased ten-fold under this law, it would still mean less than a one percent increase in support of schools,” she says.
The idea behind the new law originated from the bill’s lead author, Republican State Representative Garey Bies, who has a law enforcement background. Previously, in drug busts involving less than $5,000, confiscated money typically ended up going toward a suspect’s attorney fees or prosecution costs. “So in a way, [suspects] benefited from their ill-gotten gains,” Bies says.
If more than $5,000 was involved, local law enforcement agencies could sell confiscated property, and a portion of that money went back to the law enforcement agency while the remainder went to the Common School Fund. Some of the fund’s other sources come from fines, fees, forfeitures, unclaimed property, and timber revenues. For example, most of the $25,000 recently levied against a few Wal-Mart stores in Wisconsin for overcharging customers on bulk items such as sweet potatoes and whole bean coffee will end up going to the state’s school fund, according to published reports.
The $600 million fund will distribute $28.4 million to school libraries this fiscal year—making the few thousands collected from last year’s drug busts a mere drop in the bucket. “My prediction is you’re going to see a lot more money going into the Common School Fund in 2006,” Bies says.
