The Federal Government Says That The City of Tulsa Cannot Use Money Saved Through Attrition To Pay For Additional Cops

A few days ago, the City Council received a copy of the federal government’s requirements regarding the $3.5 million grant for additional police officers. The official name of the document is the “2009 COPS Hiring Recovery Program Grant Owner’s Manual.” “COPS” is an acronym for “Community Oriented Policing Services.”

The entire document is 84 pages long. It’s clarified quite a few things that I had some questions about and it’s also raised another question or two.

As you are probably aware, the grant money can only be used to pay the new officers’ salaries and benefits for the first three years. But, the City is required to pay their salaries and benefits for the fourth year. The Mayor’s budget figures indicate that would cost about $1.25 million, in 2009 dollars.

One of the arguments in favor of accepting the grant money is that the City of Tulsa loses about 36 officers per year through normal attrition. Over the next three years, if we don’t fill all of those positions, we will save enough money to pay the fourth year for the grant-funded officers.

But, the federal government’s “Owner’s Manual” says that we can’t do that. If we do, we’d be in violation of the terms of the grant.

Section 5 of the “Owner’s Manual” is called “Retention.” The first paragraph says:

“At the time of grant application, your agency committed to retaining all sworn officer positions awarded under the CHRP grant with state and/or local funds for a minimum of 12 months following the conclusion of 36 months of federal funding for each position, over and above the number of locally-funded sworn officer positions that would have existed in the absence of the grant. Your agency cannot satisfy the retention requirement by using CHRP-funded positions to fill locally-funded vacancies resulting from attrition.”

It goes on to say, in the middle of that page:

“Ábsorbing CHRP-funded positions through attrition (rather than adding the extra positions to your budget with additional funding) does not meet the retention requirement.”

The same requirement is discussed in Section 4, called “Supplementing, Not Supplanting.”

On page 12, in the first paragraph under that heading, the “Owner’s Manual” says:

“In addition, your agency must take active and timely steps pursuant to its standard procedures to fully fund law enforcement costs already budgeted as well as fill all locally-funded vacancies resulting from attrition during the life of the grant.”

A couple of paragraphs later, it says:

“Grant recipients may not reduce their sworn officer budget just to take advantage of the CHRP grant award.”

“Grant recipients may not reduce their locally-funded number of sworn officer positions during the three-year CHRP grant period as a direct result of receiving the CHRP funding to pay for additional officers.”

I think that’s pretty clear. The federal government says that we cannot pay for the fourth year of the grant-funded officers’ salaries and benefits by using the money that we would save through attrition. If we did, we’d violate the terms of the grant.

Apparently, Mayor Taylor has already made assurances to the federal government as to the source of the additional funding, although we don’t know what that is.

Several times, the federal government’s “Owner’s Manual” makes reference to the application for the grant that the City was required to submit and statements and assurances that the City was required to make in the application. So far, the City Council has not seen the City of Tulsa’s application. I have asked Mayor’ Taylor’s staff to provide the City Council with a copy.

For example, the “Owner’s Manual” states, on page 14:

“At the time of grant application, your agency was required to affirm that it plans to retain all sworn officer positions awarded under the CHRP grant and identify the planned source(s) of retention funding.”

There are other references to the application and statements and assurances that the City was required to make. For example, the purpose of the grant is to enhance an agency’s community policing efforts. In Section 13, the “Owner’s Manual” says:

“Community policing activities to be implemented or enhanced by your agency were identified in your CHRP grant application.”

The phrase “community policing” can mean different things to different people and it isn't necessarily a bad thing. But, I think the City Council ought to know what the City of Tulsa committed itself to do in the grant application.

There are a lot of things in the “Owner’s Manual” that I think the City Council ought to discuss with the Mayor, in an open, public meeting, televised on TGOV.

But, for now, the bottom line is this:

According to the federal government, the City of Tulsa cannot use the money that we would save through attrition to pay the fourth year salaries and benefits for the federally-funded police officers.

As I said before, I am completely in favor of adding police officers above and beyond our attrition rate. I've been trying to find a way to add cops for nearly four years. The MGT of America study said that we need to add about 60 officers, beyond our attrition rate. I just don't think that this one-time federal grant is the way to do it.