RALEIGH (AP) — The director of North Carolina’s once-maligned crime lab says the facility has cut its turnaround time by an average of 150 days to under a year and is close to being fully staffed.

And even though attrition and funding remain major issues, director John Byrd says the lab can no longer be the scapegoat for the state’s criminal justice system.

Byrd updated the lab’s status in a report last month to legislators

Some law enforcement agencies believe change isn’t happening quickly enough and have taken matters into their own hands by building their own labs or outsourcing some types of analysis. And some defense attorneys remain skeptical of analysts’ objectivity since the lab is under the auspices of the attorney general, the state’s top prosecutor.