LV officials seek audit of police budget formula

Las Vegas officials want to look at how funding for the Metropolitan Police Department is divided between the city and Clark County, something that officials said the city has never examined in detail.

City leaders have discussed auditing the police funding formula for more than a year, and on Wednesday councilmen Larry Brown and Steve Wolfson said the audit should continue to be pursued.

But it's expected to be expensive, running up a six-figure price tag at a time when government entities are feeling the squeeze of a slow economy and sluggish revenue.

One of the first casualties of the squeeze has been outside consulting contracts, especially unbudgeted ones. The audit would fall into that category.

Still, Brown said the city would reach out to county and police officials to see whether the audit would be "worth the effort," even if it's not performed immediately.

"It doesn't hurt us to get to the position where the sheriff would concur and the county would concur," Brown said. "Right now, it's kind of at a standstill."

As far as the county is concerned, "we don't object to an audit," spokesman Dan Kulin said, if the city wants to do it.

The Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.

The question first came up several years ago when the city's share of the joint police funding jumped from year to year. Recently, that number has remained stable or declined, Brown said. But there's still interest in how the numbers are determined.

Several factors go into the calculation, such as population, the number of calls for service and the types of crime reported.

The audit would test the integrity of that data and the way it's gathered to ensure its accuracy, according to information from the city auditor's office.

The city doesn't think it's being mistreated, Brown said.

"I don't think it's that at all," he said. "The issue was the fluctuation. A 1 (percent) or 2 percent shift of that sharing of the cost of Metro can have a pretty big impact on our budget."

State law contains a formula for dividing the bulk of the Police Department's budget between Clark County and the city of Las Vegas.

In the 2006-07 fiscal year, for example, Las Vegas' share was $122 million, and Clark County's was $187 million. The department's overall budget was just under $512 million.

Contact reporter Alan Choate at achoate@reviewjournal.com or 702-229-6435.