Editorial: DNA numbers don’t add up

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Politicians love easy sound bites and panacea numbers, and budget season is rife with such vague points of fact.

Take Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to expand DNA collection upon arrest. The governor has thrown around some large numbers while pitching his program: $10 million in federal grant money available and $250 surcharges to help pay for the onslaught of new genetic samples.

But those numbers don’t tell the whole story.

Yes, President Barack Obama this year signed a bill into law that will make $10 million in grants available each fiscal year from 2013 to 2015 to states that collect DNA from arrested felony suspects, as Walker has proposed. But at most, a state is eligible for grant money equal to no more than 100 percent of the first-year costs to start the program.

So, at best, federal money would cover the $2,178,100 Walker proposes spending in fiscal year 2014 to hire 16 full-time employees to process the wave of new DNA evidence. And that’s if Wisconsin somehow manages to land 22 percent of the money available to all 50 states.

That also means no federal money is coming to Wisconsin’s rescue in fiscal year 2015, when Walker proposes spending an additional $3,930,400 to hire 26 more full-time employees to process the DNA evidence.

So where will that money come from?

Walker points to his proposed expansion of the DNA surcharge assessed on felony and misdemeanor convictions. He is pushing for a $250 surcharge for felony cases and $200 for all other criminal cases.

But those surcharges only could be assessed if an arrestee is convicted of the crime. By that time, the DNA evidence has already been collected and processed, adding to the state’s bottom line.

And even for those who eventually are convicted, Wisconsin case history shows that imposing a DNA surcharge is not as simple as just tacking that figure on at sentencing. In the case of State v. Ray Shawn Cherry, for example, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals in 2008 ruled that “the trial court must do something more than stating it is imposing the DNA surcharge simply because it can.” The court went on to state, “We also do not find the trial court’s explanation that the surcharge was imposed to support the DNA database costs sufficient to conclude that the trial court properly exercised its discretion.”

Suddenly, the state’s reliance on a cure-all surcharge doesn’t sound so secure.

Now is the time to question the numbers, before the governor writes a check the state potentially can’t cash.