Budget Committee Approves $5 Million Cut in Marijuana Crime Enforcement

The Colorado Legislature's Joint Budget Committee has approved a $5 million reduction to a statewide grant program that focuses on fighting the black market for marijuana.

Created by a 2017 bill targeting illegal marijuana activity, the Gray and Black Market Marijuana Enforcement Grant program provides funding for local law enforcement agencies and district attorneys to use in investigating and prosecuting unlicensed pot operations.

The money can go to personnel costs, equipment, vehicle use and pre-trial incarceration, according to the state Department of Local Affairs (DOLA), the state agency responsible for issuing and auditing the grants. After reimbursing nearly $11.7 million from 2019 to 2020, however, the program's grant total fell to less than $800,000 in 2021, and is estimated to reach just over $900,000 this year.

"The funds have made it possible to better outfit detectives and officers with much-needed equipment, thereby reducing the hazards of illegal marijuana grow enforcement and dangerous criminal activities," according to a DOLA report on the program in 2021. "Prior to this grant program, the manpower, equipment and specialized training needed by local law enforcement, as well as additional staff hours required for prosecution by district attorneys’ offices, were cost-prohibitive."

That's not how the Joint Budget Committee sees it, though.

The grant program "has been over-appropriated and underutilized since its inception," according to a budget summary from the JBC, which recently approved a $5 million funding cut to the program over the next three years. If approved by Colorado lawmakers, the annual appropriation for the grants would sit at around $950,000 in this year's long bill.

Despite the JBC's assessment, DOLA local government division director Chantal Unfug says that grant requests have remained about the same over the past few years, but law enforcement funding opportunities decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not all law enforcement agencies are aware of the funding, either, she adds.

"The number of applicants is relatively stable, but the amount of funds available to each applicant is reduced. During various stakeholder engagements statewide, there was anecdotal feedback that there was a lack of awareness of the program due to local staff transitions, lack of local staff capacity to manage state funds, and concern about accepting marijuana tax funds," she says.

According to the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice's most recent marijuana impact report from 2021,
the number of marijuana-related court filings across the state declined 55 percent from 2012 to 2019. The amount of black market activity has fluctuated, however: The number of cases with a marijuana felony as the top charge declined dramatically in the years immediately after recreational legalization in 2012, dropping from 986 to 418 in 2014, but went back up to 806 by 2019. The number of Colorado court filings linking marijuana to organized crime went from 31 in 2012 to 119 by 2017 — but then fell back to 34 by 2019.

Currently, law enforcement agencies and district attorneys submit a grant request to DOLA before a fiscal year begins, with funds documented on a quarterly basis. Both DOLA and the JBC have expressed a desire to re-evaluate the program during the three-year period of budget cuts, with future funding requirements likely based on a 2021 law that requires more evidence-based information for programs run by state government agencies.

Personnel costs are the hardest to predict in the program's current layout, according to Unfug.

All local law enforcement agencies are eligible for the program, but the funding is weighted on population and black-market crime activity. Colorado Springs agencies have received over $3.1 million since the program's inception, the most of any city, while Denver law enforcement comes in second at just under $1.7 million.

There were 570 marijuana-related cases or seizures that were connected to the enforcement grant program in the 2020-21 fiscal year, according to DOLA, resulting in seizures of over 19,000 pounds of illegal marijuana, the dismantling of 331 production sites, and 221 arrests.