Minnesota DPS seeks $165 million-plus in bonding for BCA labs and State Patrol headquarters; funding source draws scrutiny

Chair Mary Fransen convened the Capital Investment Committee on Feb. 11 to hear the Department of Public Safety’s capital requests, including funding to build a Southern Bureau of Criminal Apprehension regional office and laboratory in Mankato, expand the Bemidji BCA facility and construct a consolidated Minnesota State Patrol headquarters.

The request for the Mankato BCA laboratory rose during the predesign process from about $48 million to $68,100,000, Drew Evans, superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, told the committee. “Right now at our headquarters location we are over the design capacity of that facility by about 175 staff,” Evans said, describing rapid growth in DNA, digital evidence and drug testing workloads that have outstripped existing laboratory space.

The governor’s recommendation also includes a separate request of $4,200,000 for land acquisition in Bemidji to replace and roughly double the size of that regional lab, Evans said. Colonel Kristina Bogojevic, head of the Minnesota State Patrol, sought $97,000,000 to build a consolidated patrol headquarters for multiple metro districts; that request follows a $22,500,000 appropriation the state provided last year for design and land…