June 28, 2024
Section 8.171 appropriates $1,500,000 in one-time funds from the General Revenue Fund to the Department of Public Safety, for the State Highway Patrol, for DNA testing of unidentified human remains for the purpose of identifying those remains, for the period beginning July 1, 2024 and ending June 30, 2025. The section requires that any third-party DNA testing laboratories be vetted through and approved by the Department of Health and Senior Services. The appropriation continues in FY2026 in restructured form: H.B. 8 (2025), the FY2026 Department of Public Safety act, places $1,337,018 in one-time General Revenue funds inside Section 8.170, the State Highway Patrol Crime Labs section, rather than in a section of its own, and broadens the stated purpose to forensic genetic genealogy DNA testing used to help solve violent crimes, identify unidentified human remains, and support county law enforcement, medical examiners, state universities and coroners in cold case investigations, expressly including communications, training and databasing related to that testing. The Department of Health and Senior Services vetting requirement carries forward.