If you know of any free money, we'd like to know. Better still, tell Racine Mayor John Dickert.

He is wisely taking a second look at what would appear at first to be a godsend: $813,000 from the federal government to hire three new police officers. The strings on this chunk of money are considerable and could impede the city's unpleasant choices as it tries to maintain a balanced budget during an economic downturn. At first glance, the federal program looks good.

Funded as part of the economic stimulus bill passed earlier this year, the COPS Hiring Recovery Program was intended to keep up policing as municipalities trimmed their departments in order to handle the financial pinch. (COPS stands for Community Oriented Policing Services and refers to officers, like those in Racine, who work primarily with the people in a specific neighborhood.) Communities could hire new COP officers or retain those who had been or were scheduled to be laid off because of budget cuts. The grants covered salary and benefits for three years, and there was no limit on how much money communities could ask for.

Then there are those strings. In the fourth year, following the end of the grant, municipalities must cover the cost of these COP officers on their own, and during all four years they cannot reduce the number of sworn officers in their departments. In other words, they can't use stimulus money to substitute for their own funds.

What that could do is limit a city's ability to adjust the size of its department. In other words, being forced to maintain a police department at a certain size could force more unpopular decisions. For example, being unable to reduce the number of police officers may force a reduction in the number of sanitation workers, and the consequences of that would be a public health risk from proliferating rodents and insects.

Because of the relative lack of strings on these grants, they were very popular. They were so popular that the federal government received more than 7,000 applications worth more than $8.3 billion, whereas Congress had appropriated only $1 billion. From that standpoint, Racine should count itself fortunate to be one of the seven Wisconsin municipalities selected for a grant. (In total, the U.S. Justice Department awarded grants to 1,046 departments for 4,699 officers.)

In truth, no one wants to see government services go away, especially during a time of economic stress when some are more in demand. Wishes don't compensate for financial reality, however. Perhaps City Administrator Tom Friedel had a valid idea to save for that fourth-year cost during the three preceding budget years. Perhaps it will cause one of those unpleasant cuts elsewhere in government. In any case, the city should not limit its budget options at the very time when it needs to be most flexible.