If Measure 30 fails, one of the biggest winners may be illegal drug users.

That's because when police send in a packet of white powder to get confirmation that it's methamphetamine, no one will be there to test it. The State Legislature has stipulated where the cuts would be made if Measure 30 fails, and one of the biggest cutting spots is the Oregon State Police forensics department - site of the state's only full-service crime lab.

"See, with all of our drug arrests, any time we confiscate drugs off people, we have to have them sent in and analyzed by the crime lab to make sure that white powder is what we think it is," said Benton County Sheriff Jim Swinyard. "Essentially, this is going to shut down our drug prosecutions."

It may not shut them completely down, though, according to Benton County District Attorney Scott Heiser.

"What I've told people is that one of the first things I'm going to do if Measure 30 fails is invoke a newly enacted statute that allows DAs to designate a host of class-C felonies as misdemeanors," he said.

The statute also allows all drug possession charges, regardless of felony class, to be treated as misdemeanors as well.

"That saves indigent-defense costs and crime-lab costs," Heiser said. "There's a law that says if drug possession is prosecuted as a misdemeanor, you don't have to have crime-lab analysis that says it's drugs - a field test is OK."

So, for a methamphetamine user caught in the middle of a three-day binge, the worst-case scenario could be a misdemeanor prosecution and a few days in the county jail. Unlike felons, misdemeanor offenders don't get sent away to the state prison.

CSI stripped

The Oregon Legislature, when it enacted the temporary tax that Measure 30 seeks to repeal, also stipulated exactly where the cuts would come if the tax package was canceled. At the Oregon State Police, all those cuts were directed right at the forensics division: $3.9 million. That translates into 60 jobs - out of a total, right now, of 107, down from 130 a year ago.

And the forensics division has no control over which 60 employees to let go. According to their union contract, the last employee hired is the first to be laid off - period.

The result: 55 percent of the DNA testing staff, 67 percent of the alcohol breath-testing staff, 60 percent of the fingerprint examiners, 80 percent of the forensic firearms examiners and 75 percent of the crime-scene team will be gone.

"So in my operation here at the university, I wouldn't lose any people, but the impact would be huge," said Lt. Phil Zerzan, director of the state police's Oregon State University patrol division. "What it would mean for us is, a lot of crimes are reported here on the university, from sexual assault all the way down to somebody having their car broken into. Forensics helps us solve those crimes."

Not any more, Zerzan said - not if Measure 30 fails.

"Right now, we can send fingerprints down to the crime lab in Springfield and they can compare them with known offenders," Zerzan said.

But with the cuts in staff, Zerzan added, "They will just blanket but no longer work property crimes. The time it would take to process a sexual assault on campus would be measured easily in months. And that's not a lack of desire - they just won't have the resources to process evidence in a timely manner, and that's going to leave bad guys out on the street."

Big crimes only

Dave Schmierbach, director of forensic services for the state, said it won't be quite as simple as not working any more property crimes. What the forensics division will do, he said, is "triage" cases and pick only the most outrageous ones - as many as they can afford.

"Turnaround times and backlogs are going to go through the roof," he said. "We are going to triage and prioritize, and we are probably not going to get to most crimes."

And the cases they won't be able to work will surprise many people.

"You know the University of Portland case?" Schmierbach said, referring to the 2001 rape and murder of a University of Portland student in her dorm room, for which a former student was arraigned last week on murder charges brought based on the lab's DNA evidence. "Under our current triage and priority guidelines, we would not have worked the University of Portland case."

DUII breath tests

The state crime lab also owns and maintains the alcohol breath-testing equipment used to test suspected drunken drivers all over the state, including units at the Benton County jail and the Philomath Police Department. The staff that maintains and repairs those machines is up for a 67 percent cut.

"That will limit our ability to repair the instruments," Schmierbach said. "We will have to pull instruments out of the field - we can only support 69 or 70. We have 105 out there now."

Where those will be will depend on which instruments break first. For instance, if the unit at Philomath Police Department quits working, the state will decide whether to fix it or pull it. If the state decides to pull it, all drunken drivers arrested in west Benton County would have to be driven all the way down to Corvallis to take breath tests.

Major crimes

In Oregon City, when the bodies of Ashley Pond and Miranda Geddis were found in Ward Weaver's back yard, a team of four crime-scene experts from the forensics division were sent to the scene to help gather evidence for the lab to analyze.

Three of those four people are scheduled to be laid off if Measure 30 fails, Schmierbach said.

"That creates two problems," he said. "They won't be available for the next crime of this type. But also, these folks could scatter to the wind, and they're the ones we have to call back for the trial."

Schmierbach said the "skeletonization" of the forensics division will leave the mid-valley - and the rest of the state - without any real alternatives.

"I think the key is, we are the only place that provides full-service forensics in the state. There is no place else for locals to go without contracting with a private vendor, which is prohibitively expensive," he said. "Even if Measure 30 fails, I'm going to work until May 1 to stop this, and that may mean I have to go and visit all 90 legislators. I will say this: The Legislature is the only one that can stop this. Only the Legislature can fix this."