Monday, August 07, 2000
Taxpayers foot bill for weapon program
Most of permit fee not going to police
By
The Associated Press
LOUISVILLE — A $60 permit fee has failed to sufficiently bankroll Kentucky's concealed-carry weapons law, leaving taxpayers with much of the financial burden for the legislation.
Since 1997, the General Assembly has poured in $2.2 million to bail out the program despite lawmakers' assurances that it would be self-sufficient.
The cost to taxpayers breaks down to 53 cents a person, or about 13 cents a year, said state Rep. Robert Damron, D-Nicholasville, au thor of the concealed-carry law, which was passed in 1996. Mr. Damron said taxpayers get stuck financing plenty of controversial programs.
“You can't say that taxpayers should pay for programs they support and not ones they don't,” he said. “If we did, we wouldn't have any tax dollars.”
The concealed-carry law allows permit holders to carry handguns and other deadly weapons on the street and in other public places. Advocates said it would give gun owners the freedom to pro tect themselves and their families while assuring that they received training before getting their firearms permit.
Applicants are screened for felonies, certain misdemeanors and domestic-violence orders. They must be older than 21 and pass a written and shooting test after eight hours of training.
The license fees has failed to pay for the program in part because Kentucky State Police — which do background checks and processing — receive only one-third of each $60 fee.
Sheriffs collect another $20, even though their offices only hand out applications and hand over permits if they're granted.
And $10 of the $20 that the Administrative Office of the Courts gets is used to support a program that has nothing to do with concealed carry, in which the office provides free criminal background checks on volunteers for youth groups. More than 71,000 people have been checked through the Youth Leader Program.
Because part of the fee goes for that program, Mr. Damron argues, permit holders “are more than paying their fair share.”
But Nancy Jo Kemper, of the Kentucky Council of Churches, said that the concealed-carry owners are not paying for the free youth checks, when you consider the legislative subsidies that have kept the gun program
afloat.
“People who are opposed by conscience to this have had to pay for it, and that's wrong,” she said.
State Rep. Kathy Stein, D-Lexington, one of the few gun-control advocates in the General Assembly, said the fact that the legislature voted to financially rescue concealed carry after approving it as self-supporting attests to the power of the National Rifle Association in Kentucky.
“The NRA tells the Kentucky legislature to jump, and it says, "How high?”' she said. “It's a sad commentary.”
The legislature had to give state police an infusion of $1,158,000 in fiscal 1997 and 1998 to cover start-up costs for computers and other equipment. Then lawmakers appropriated $500,000 in 1999 and 2000 to keep concealed carry running, state budget records show.
For now the program is operating in the black, state police lawyer Elizabeth Baker said.
But she said the black ink might soon be replaced by red again because the agency needs to upgrade its equipment and pay the costs of reprinting thousands of licenses to reflect that the legislature this year extended the renewal period for permits from three to five years.
Mr. Damron acknowledged that he and other supporters predicted concealed carry would pay for itself, given the hefty license fee. But he said its deficits are overstated because it actually generates revenue for the sheriffs.
Hardin County Sheriff Robert Thomas, president of the Kentucky Sheriffs Association, said: “It is not a big moneymaker. But any fee we get helps.”
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