Some members of the Legislature’s Criminal Justice Committee are miffed because the Department of Public Safety replaced one if its airplanes – using forfeited funds – without the committee’s permission.

“This is something the committee should have been involved with,” said committee Co-chairman Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, according to the Capitol News Service, even though the committee has been uninvolved to date.

Diamond says he’d submit legislation requiring lawmaker oversight of drug forfeiture spending. “In these economic times,” he said, “We have to very carefully look to see if that money is there to spend.”

But drug forfeitures, by their very nature, are there to spend.

They are not tax revenue, which legislators control. Forfeitures come through police, for police. Of all the budget lines filled by state government, drug assets are one of the few to spend wildly, with our enthusiastic endorsement.

Maine law enforcement agencies have used forfeited assets for drug education programs, training and equipment – such as Tasers, drug dogs, cars, four-wheelers and yes, even airplanes. They take pride in stenciling “Taken from a drug dealer” on seized Cadillac Escalades, as Auburn police have done.

Municipal or county governing boards usually approve spending forfeiture funds, a procedure akin to the legislative appropriations process. (The Appropriations Committee, we note, did approve the state police transfer of forfeiture funds into capital funds to buy the airplane.)

The matter is lawmakers disagree with who decides how drug forfeitures are spent. Because of this $345,000 airplane, they think – for whatever reason – they should. But forfeitures cannot be used for their purposes.

Forfeitures must be spent for law enforcement and here, we’d hope, police and legislative priorities align.

Yet some lawmakers feel slighted and want veto power on forfeiture spending. Until this plane landed, though, how police spent these funds wasn’t an issue to them. Nor, we think, is it an issue now.

According to statute, state police must keep a “centralized record” of all property seized, held, or ordered to it by the courts. It also records all property given to other governmental agencies, if it passes through state police.

So forfeiture spending records are available, if any legislator or committee wants to see them.

A recent Sun Journal investigation into drug forfeiture spending in Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties uncovered that police have spent this money on police-related items, as they should.

Every agency, save one, released forfeiture records upon request. Given this openness, it would seem lawmakers don’t need to threaten legislation to oversee drug forfeiture spending.

All they need is to ask.