Members of the Appropriations & Finance committee highlighted a Department of Public Safety (DPS) request for $3,000,000 to fund phase 2 of an "intelligence-led policing" project and discussed whether the project should receive fuller funding than recommended by staff.

The executive budget requested $3,000,000 for phase 2 of the intelligence-led policing project; Legislative Finance Committee (LFC) staff indicated willingness to fund $2,000,000. "The executive's asking for 3,000,000 for phase 2 of the intelligence led policing project, and I'm assuming that is AI... LFC is willing to go 2,000,000," one member said while flagging the line item in section 7 (page 14, line 26).

Staff and committee members described the project as an information and analytics platform intended to provide capabilities such as data collection, mapping and analytics for law-enforcement agencies statewide; participants repeatedly cautioned not to conflate the project with purely autonomous artificial intelligence. A staff member said the project "should have those capabilities and be able to..." provide analytics and mapping to LEAs, while also confirming phase 1 is wrapping up and phase 2 was a new request.

Members asked about oversight and data access. Two committee members who sit on the project's oversight or certification committee said they had seen the proposal and that some technical stakeholders raised concerns that phase 2 had not been part of the original plan. Committee members asked staff to confirm whether DPS would have access to municipal live-video feeds and whether safeguards and governance were in place. "I'll have to go back and check with DPS to see if they have a similar capability... I don't want to say for certain until I know," a staff member said.

Committee discussion compared the proposed system to existing real-time crime center capabilities in Albuquerque, where local units use mapping, live feeds and analytics to prioritize patrol activity. Staff noted large IT projects can grow in scope and cost over time and pointed to recent state IT projects (MMIS, HCA) that ballooned to hundreds of millions of dollars.

No formal action was taken; the item was flagged for further review. Members requested staff follow-ups on technical scope, whether the project includes AI components, the degree of statewide access to live data feeds and the recommended funding level.

For committee reference the project was flagged in section 7 (specials), cited as page 14, line 26 in the materials discussed. Both the executive proposal and LFC staff recommendation appeared on the table but no vote occurred in the meeting.