Voters to Decide Crime Lab Spending

Gov. Gray Davis on Friday signed a measure that will allow California’s voters to decide whether to spend $220 million over the next several decades on improving crime labs around the state, including Ventura County’s.

If approved by voters next March, the bond measure could be a boon for the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, which hopes to double the size of its crime lab, an expansion one lab official said would cost at least $15 million.

A state auditor’s report last year found that the county’s current crime lab setup--41 staff members working in about 17,000 square feet of space--is about half the ideal size, said Renee Artman, forensic sciences laboratory manager for the Ventura lab.

Moving to a new lab of at least 30,000 square feet would “really help to solve the crimes much faster, much better,” Artman said.

With the equipment, layout and nature of the work in crime labs, about 1,000 square feet per employee is considered acceptable. The auditor’s report also found labs were cramped or outdated in Oakland, San Diego and Los Angeles.

If voters approve the measure, money likely would not be available before 2002. In any case, Ventura County wouldn’t automatically get a piece of the pie.

Funds would be granted by the Forensics Laboratory Authority, a seven-member board to be set up under the state Department of Justice. Individual labs would apply to the board, and grants would be issued on a case-by-case basis, said Paul Hefner, a spokesman for Assemblyman Robert M. Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys), who sponsored the measure.

Artman said the Ventura lab, nationally accredited earlier this year, is going ahead with preliminary expansion plans before the March vote.

Lab officials are planning within the next month to ask the county Board of Supervisors to approve funding for a needs-assessment survey for the expansion.