S. 1316, Strong Communities Act of 2025

S. 1316 would amend the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program to permit the Department of Justice (DOJ) to award competitive grants to local law enforcement agencies for training programs for their recruits and officers. To be eligible, recruits and officers would need to serve in a local law enforcement agency within seven miles of their residence, or within 20 miles if they live in a county with fewer than 150,000 people, for at least four of the eight years after they complete the training program. The bill would require officers or recruits to repay the training costs if they do not meet the service requirements. Lastly, the bill would require DOJ to report to the Congress annually on the grants it awards under the bill.

Most underlying authorizations for the COPS program expired in 2009. The Congress has continued to provide funding for the program and provided $417 million for the program in 2025. In this estimate, CBO is estimating the cost of the amounts necessary to implement the new activities specified in the bill and not the cost of reauthorizing the COPS program.

Using information from DOJ about awards in recent years under the COPS program, CBO expects that about 40 law local law enforcement agencies would receive grants each year under the bill, with an average of five recruits or officers per agency. On average, CBO estimates that it costs about $25,000 to train a recruit or officer. On that basis and based on the historical spending pattern for the program, CBO estimates that implementing the grant program would cost $10 million over the 2025-2030 period. CBO expects that the reporting requirement would cost less than $500,000 over the same period. Any related spending would be subject to the availability of appropriated funds.

The CBO staff contact for this estimate is Jeremy Crimm. The estimate was reviewed by H. Samuel Papenfuss, Deputy Director of Budget Analysis.