LAYTON -- A $25 fee Utah cities can charge to register sex offenders is being used by Top of Utah police departments to help offset the cost of tracking offenders.
Although the fee doesn't generate enough revenue to cover all the costs of the registration effort, police say an advantage to the program is that it puts registered sex offenders in regular contact with the policing agency responsible for managing them in the community.
Cities along the Wasatch Front that have adopted the annual offender registration fee as part of their 2010-11 fiscal year budgets include Roy, Riverdale and Layton.
In the 2010 legislative session, House Bill 209 authorized entities that register sex offenders to charge an annual fee of not more than $25, Layton City Attorney Gary Crane said.
Layton wants to collect the fee to offset some of the costs associated with maintaining the registry and tracking sex offenders, Crane said.
Sex offenders by law are required to register annually by their birthdays, officials said.
Currently about 80 registered sex offenders are living in Layton, Police Lt. Garret Atkin said.
Rep. Christine F. Watkins, D-Price, sponsored the legislation in this year's session. The $25 fee that cities can assess is in addition to the annual $100 fee registered sex offenders were already required to pay to the Department of Corrections to maintain its state data base.
Watkins said she sponsored the bill after the Helper police chief told her how the fees were going to the state, and there was no compensation for those on the local level doing the work.
"The intent was not to punish sex offenders," she said of the additional charge. "It was just to help the local entities to recoup some of their administration cost in doing this. It was not meant to be punitive."
Riverdale Police Lt. James Ebert said many Utah cities have either adopted the $25 fee or are considering doing so.
With the state shifting the responsibility of tracking the offenders to local policing agencies, the cities were using their workforce to register offenders without compensation, Ebert said.
Ebert said it takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour for police to register each offender, not including any address changes or information updates that may have to be added to an offender's file.
"There is more than just contact once a year," Ebert said of Riverdale, which currently has about a dozen registered sex offenders.
"For us (the $25 fee) is definitely not a revenue generator," he said.
Roy also assesses the $25 fee, and would charge more if it were allowed to, Police Chief Greg Whinham said.
"I think it is low, but it is what we have been allowed," he said.
The $25 fee does not cover the cost of managing sex offenders, Whinham said, but that does not concern him.
Requiring the city's 70 sex offenders to register keeps authorities in contact, ensuring offenders are compliant. At the same time, it provides offenders with the chance to share with police any public harassment they may be experiencing, as the sex offender registry can be accessed by the public.
The city has the offenders check in with police twice a year, Whinham said. "They come in twice, we charge them once," he said.
Offenders re-register on their birthday, and then six months later return to the city offices to verify information about where they live and what kind of vehicle they drive, Whinham said.
Those registered offenders who do not come in to re-register are immediately considered to be noncompliant, and police are sent to check on their whereabouts, he said.
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