The budget fight continues regarding concealed handgun permit wait times. (George Frey/Getty Images)
The skepticism surrounding how Gov. John Hickenlooper’s administration is handling concealed handgun permits continues to mount in the statehouse.
The issue is how long it takes to get a background check from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, between Republicans and Democrats in the first half of the session.
But now, state lawmakers from both parties are raising questions.
The Joint Budget Committee on Thursday unanimously decided to deny a CBI request to spend $408,000 from permit fees in next year’s budget, which would have allowed the agency to hire eight staffers and reduce the wait times for processing the concealed carry permits.
The reason behind the vote is distrust of the administration’s data about the program.
The bureau reported that the number of permit applications was expected to increase 20 percent in fiscal year 2015 to 70,000. The amount the agency can spend to process the InstaChecks hasn’t increased since fiscal year 2012, when the number of applicants was closer to 26,000.
CBI officials estimate the wait times could reach 54 days this fiscal year, compared to 45 days the prior year, so it asked to use more permit fee money to hire additional staff.
But JBC staff cast doubts the bureau’s numbers and recommended against the funding (see page 61). The report said the agency “is unable to provide reliable data regarding CBI turnaround times for background checks.”
The bureau apparently doesn’t collect precise figures. Instead, CBI supervisors estimate the wait periods based on a sampling of applications and their expected turnaround time, JBC report said.
The new report only prolongs a fight that most thought ended Wednesday to fund the new CBI staffers in a supplemental spending bill. , Republican budget writers questioned the agency’s report about wait times and the need for more staff, but Democrats pushed to include the money.
Susan Medina, a CBI spokeswoman, confirmed the process outlined in the report, but she could not say whether the sampling method was scientific. She also said they have daily conversations with sheriff’s around the state about wait times. “We do evaluations but it’s more anecdotal,” she said.
The agency records when it receives a request and when it completes the processing, but it remains unclear why they don’t track the information in a way that would produce better data.
CBI has yet to respond to the committee’s actions.
