Agency warns budget cuts could crash background-check system

The agency that screens teachers' criminal histories and checks out concealed weapons applicants is warning that it could be forced to cut off all background checks next year unless lawmakers prop up its anemic budget.

Without legislative action, the Bureau of Criminal Identification warns it could have to axe 20 employees responsible for managing its vast criminal database.

The impact could be severe: Conviction records could slip through the cracks or pile up as part of a backlog, leaving police without up-to-date information.

"If we lose personnel, we risk databases not being up to date and complete," said Alice Erickson, chief of the bureau. "Law enforcement would be at risk because they wouldn't have that arrest information on the guy they just picked up."

And the agency, which conducts tens of thousands of background checks each year on teachers and bus drivers, gun buyers, concealed weapons permit applicants, law enforcement officers, daycare providers, real estate agents, housing applicants, and others could have to stop conducting database searches altogether.

Carol Lear, legal counsel for the Utah State Office of Education, said the cut seems draconian and would cause a big problem.

"It would pose some really serious safety concerns for schools ... and children," she said. "If you have a bus driver with several DUIs or a bus mechanic with some ongoing drug problem that we have no way of knowing about, that

It would also undermine parents' confidence that their children are safe when they send them to school, she said.

The threat of a BCI closure comes as schools are stepping up their effort to get employees checked after a state audit warned of gaps in the system.

Lawmakers get used to these kinds of doomsday warnings and take them with a grain of salt.

But Rep. Eric Hutchings, House chairman of the subcommittee that sets BCI's budget, says the warning is real.

"The challenge is simply this: If they require us to do an across-the-board level cut like we did last year where they come in and say everyone has to share the pain, that is a very likely scenario," the Kearns Republican said.

He said the budget woes will force legislators to decide what the essential core functions of government should be.

"You start getting rid of law enforcement officers, you start getting rid of background checks and you could end up with a really unfortunate environment in our classroom," Hutchings said.

A recent Salt Lake Tribune investigation found that about two-thirds of the teaching license revocations and suspensions since 1992 involved sexual misconduct, including pornography offenses.

Clark Aposhian, chairman of the Utah Shooting Sports Council and a concealed weapons instructor, said individuals getting a concealed-carry permit pay for their own background checks and then some, to the point that there was an $800,000 surplus in that account.

He doesn't want to see those fees increased and believes BCI will get what it needs to run its system.

"It's appropriate that the Legislature is advised of the potential," Aposhian said. "They have to set up the Legislature for doom and gloom if they don't get what they need to run the system."

BCI says it needs the authority to keep some of the fees paid for the checks in order to keep its employees on staff and the system working.

The BCI budget scenario was one of hundreds of reductions in state government that were laid out in a 148-page report produced this week by the Governors Office of Planning and Budget.

Gov. Gary Herbert's spokeswoman, Angie Welling, said the information in the report was only a collection of possible scenarios. The governor wanted information on impending cuts at all of the state departments "so he could balance all the needs of the state."

"Simply because it's included in there doesn't mean it's going to happen," she said. "Certainly something as important as conducting background checks and maintaining public safety is going to rise to the top when the governor is balancing the state's most pressing needs."

Indeed, there were several warnings in the report: the early release of prison inmates into a system that doesn't have adequate parole supervision; victims of child abuse could see services scaled back; general assistance payments that help mentally and physically disabled Utahns stay in their homes could be eliminated; and individuals could lose their mental health and substance abuse treatment.

The governor will release his budget proposal Dec. 11.

Senate budget chairman Lyle Hillyard, R-Logan, said he is confronted with dozens of critical funding needs and only bad choices.

"There's a lot of them like [BCI's situation]. So we're going to have to work them through," he said. "It's not an easy job."