Ohio Coroners Worry Budget Cuts Will Force Closures

CINCINNATI - Budget cuts are causing severe staffing and funding problems for some coroner’s offices already facing backlogs of cases, and at least one Ohio coroner says budget cuts proposed for next year would force his office to shut down its forensic lab.
   
The Hamilton County coroner in Cincinnati has said that any more budget reductions would mean cutting staff in the forensic lab as early as the first of the year, closing the lab and delaying criminal investigations. The lab already is closing the third Monday and Tuesday of each month, and full-time employees are
having to take 10 unpaid furlough days by the end of the year.
   
“This is very serious,“ Dr. O’dell Owens said at a news conference Friday. “There is going to be a criminal we may be able to identify, but we won’t be able to because we are shut down or on furlough,“ he said.
   
Reduced funding and staffing are causing growing concern for coroners around the state and nation. A congressionally mandated report earlier this year from the National Research Council calls for major reforms in the nation’s forensic science system, pointing to underfunding and understaffing among the problems.
   
In Cuyahoga County in northeast Ohio, Coroner Dr. Frank Miller said his office so far has been able to keep its lab open, although there have been employee furloughs.
   
“I think we will be OK, unless we have to make more cuts next year,“ Miller said. “If we have to take a 15 percent cut next year, I would have to lay off at least 20 people and I would probably have to close my laboratory as well.“
   
Miller and Owens have said that the only alternative for their counties and other Ohio counties that depend on them for autopsies would be the state’s forensic lab under the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation.
   
“The state would probably have to double its lab funding to absorb the two of us,“ Miller said.
   
The Cuyahoga County coroner does autopsies for 14 counties, and Hamilton County provides them for at least nine other counties, including six in Indiana.
   
The backlog of cases will continue to grow with further budget cuts, Owens said. His lab already is working on some 19-month-old cases.
   
Clermont County, east of Cincinnati, depends on the Hamilton County coroner’s office for all of its autopsies.
   
“It would have a big impact not only on our coroner’s office and others, but also on law enforcement as a whole,“ said Darrell Hawkins, chief investigator for the Clermont County coroner. “We would have to depend on the state lab, and it’s already so backed up that we could have to wait for a year or more for some
results,“ he said.
   
A message seeking comment from the bureau was left Friday at the state attorney general’s office, which oversees the bureau.
   
The budget for the Hamilton County coroner’s office is expected to be down 17 percent from this year’s $3.9 million budget. Owens said he hopes the public will urge county commissioners to find a way to avoid the budget cuts.
   
A message seeking comment was left at the county commission’s offices on Friday.

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