GAO urges faster action on converting drug assets

WASHINGTON — The General Accounting Office said Tuesday that more needs to be done to convert money and property seized in drug busts into funds for federal and local law enforcement officials.

Maine has received some $1.75 million from the federal asset forfeiture program, which reinvests funds into law enforcement that are obtained from cash, homes, cars, planes and other property seized in criminal cases.

However, “a complaint we heard from many of Maine’s law enforcement officials is that the federal asset forfeiture program is too slow and has unnecessary delays,” said Sen. William Cohen, a member of the Senate Government Affairs Committee, which received testimony on the issue in a hearing Tuesday.

The General Accounting Office (GAO), an investigative branch of Congress, echoed the complaints made by Maine officials in a report to the committee that outlined five areas of the federal program that need help.

But first, before the Government Affairs Committee started discussing seized assets, lawmakers debated a GAO video, a 10-minute documentary of the issue used by the GAO as an experimental presentation of its report.

Cohen, who was the most vocal critic, said he was insulted by the video’s simplification of the issue, and he questioned the expense involved in making the filmed presentation. Committee chairman John Glenn, D-Ohio, pointed out that it was just an experiment.

As for the seized-assets issue, Cohen and the GAO agreed on the need to make changes.

The GAO suggested that regulations be changed so that more cash can be forfeited, or processed, through administrative offices instead of U.S. Attorney offices and the courts, which require a much lengthier and more cumbersome procedure.

Currently, only seized amounts of $100,000 or less can be processed administratively. GAO recommended that the limit be extended beyond $100,000. By doing so, some $406 million of the $557 million undergoing forfeiture as of December 1989 could be dealt with “months earlier and put to use quicker.”

More cash could be freed up by reducing excessive amounts that are held for evidence, the GAO said, adding that about half of $19 million being held up in Miami, New York and Los Angeles in February was not needed for evidence and could have been deposited.