Carthage's former McCune-Brooks hospital building was one of the big winners as state lawmakers passed the 2008-2009 budget.

The $22.4 billion spending package still has to be signed by Gov. Matt Blunt.
If he does, the Missouri State Highway Patrol will receive almost $1 million to renovate the old emergency room and radiology labs at the former hospital building on Centennial Street to house the crime lab, which now operates from Missouri Southern State University in Joplin.

"It's a start for us," said Carthage Mayor Jim Woestman. "They're going to take over about 10,000 square feet of space and we still have another party interested in the other 75,000 square feet.

The crime lab in Joplin has operated out of the Mills Anderson Justice Center at Missouri Southern since it was established in the early 1970s. The university operated it until the patrol took it over in July 2007.

Original plans had the crime lab moving to the old hospital building along with a proposed MSSU-Carthage operation, but a last-minute decision by the university not to take over the building left the crime lab in a bit of limbo.
State and patrol officials toured the old hospital building soon after the university made its decision and they decided to propose to the legislature that the move proceed.

"We might have been forced to shut the lab down if this didn't pass," said Bill Marbarker, assistant director of the crime lab division of the Missouri State Highway Patrol. "This move helps the highway patrol in several different ways and I know it was very important to the city to get stability for their old hospital building."

State Sen. Gary Nodler, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, was able to insert a little less than $1 million in one of the appropriations bills to pay for the patrol to make the necessary renovations and repairs to make the building usable as a criminal laboratory.

"The bill is on the way to the governor," Nodler said. "It's just awaiting the governor's signature. The original $500,000 was just to cover the costs of the move. The patrol requested that when it appeared someone else was going to pay for the renovations and the highway patrol would not absorb those costs. When it became a state building, we had to take into account the costs of renovation."

Marbarker said the move to the old hospital will allow the highway patrol to seek accreditation for the lab, something not possible while the lab was at Southern because of the lack of space.