Hearing of House Committee on Science House of Representatives: H.R. 798, Methamphetamine Remediation Research Act of 2005
HEARING OF HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: H.R. 798, METHAMPHETAMINE REMEDIATION RESEARCH ACT OF 2005
March 3, 2005
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Mr. Green. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Ranking Member. I salute both of you and compliment you for having these hearings, and quite candidly, for being--allowing me to be a part of these hearings as a neophyte.
I want to commend the panel. This has been an outstanding panel, and what you have said has been more than edifying. It has truly been an education for me today to hear much of what you said.
I have any number of concerns, because the omnipresent nature of the problem seems to create quite an enigma for you. I have noticed that we seem to be in our infancy as we are quarreling our empirical data, which means that we haven't quite gathered the sense of direction that we are looking for. And some of my questions will relate to the sense of direction.
But first, Ms. Green, you mentioned liability issues just a moment ago. Do we have any sense of what type of standardized notice should be accorded a property owner who has had the unfortunate circumstance to develop in his property with a lab? Ms. Green. Yes, Congressman. There are several statutes, in particular Washington State and Oregon, that have dealt quite significantly with notice issues. And there are really three types of notice issues that are dealt with with respect to an owner. The first is when someone, like law enforcement, first notices a lab, what kind of notice do they have to make to state officials and then what is the responsibility of those particular agency officials to contact the owner to see if the owner knows. There is also a particular notice that has to be placed in certain county auditor records. In some respects, people are attempting to put notice in certain title records and other kinds of public notice property records that would allow an owner, even an absentee owner, to identify, upon regular perusal of those types of records. There is also a different type of notice, which is a build-upon to what you just suggested in terms of the owner knowing, which is a future owner, a potential purchaser. There are particular states that would require a seller to give notice to a potential purchaser that there has been a particular meth lab on that particular property. And the potential purchaser has a number of days to decide whether or not to cancel that particular contract.
So many states, particularly in the west, are addressing that particular notice type of issue.
Mr. Green. Thank you.
And Dr. Bell, you talked about what I will call an--well, I suppose an intrastate integrated system that is being developed. How can we efficaciously move to an interstate integrated system?
Dr. Bell. As you said earlier, we are in the infancy of many approaches to addressing this problem. The data collection is one, but certainly the collaboration is still in a learning stage, too. In most states, there is a task force that links to other states. The governor's office in our state, and I presume in most, has a coordinator. And there are individual mechanisms that are loosely inked at this point that, over time, I think we will see much more maturity. But certainly, at the federal level, it would help to continue the efforts that are already there to coordinate through the number of agencies that are currently involved. DEA, National Institutes of Health (NIH), all of these, right now, are involved in one way or another. I think the issue is going to be how we find a focused group that truly is interstate in nature. There are several now. The question is how to focus on one interstate activity in the long-term.
Mr. Green. And my final question is for Mr. Howard, Sheriff Howard.
Protecting protectors is, sometimes, expensive proposition. Have you now a grasp on how this is impacting your budget, the whole notion of acquiring the necessary funds so that when people do rush into these unfortunate situations, they are properly protected? How does that impact your budget, please?
Mr. Howard. It has impacted our budget, obviously. We are a relatively small department. I have 126 employees. We have applied for and received several grants for equipment and training, which we have utilized in the last two to three years. Also, there is a lot of forfeiture laws and seizure laws that we have taken advantage of, and we take that monies that we have received and turn it back into training and education for the men and women in my department.
So we are keeping our head above water, as far as that goes, but it is an impact on the budget. The problem we run into is the manpower issue on labs. I have a 12-man team for the labs, but half of that team are uniformed officers. The other half are plain-clothes investigators. Those investigators are the ones that really do the legwork on these labs. It takes hundreds of hours, and that is where the budget comes into play, the manpower that we have to pay out for those men.
Mr. Green. Thank you.
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