Cities, ports to receive $700 million for homeland security
After months of complaining about insufficient federal financial support for meeting growing security demands, state and local officials will soon get some relief. This week the Department of Homeland Security announced it would allocate $700 million from the 2003 supplemental budget to help protect urban areas and critical infrastructure.
Based on a formula that takes into account threat information, critical infrastructure and population density, most of that money-$500 million-will be provided to states in the form of grants to boost security in 30 metropolitan areas. Not surprising, New York and its contiguous counties will see the biggest chunk of that money-$125 million. Washington, Chicago and Houston will receive about $42 million, $30 million and $24 million, respectively. Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle each will receive about $18 million. Grants ranging from $17 million to $6 million will be made to 22 other cities as well.
"These grants demonstrate our strong commitment to provide assistance to the men and women on the front lines of the war against terrorism," said Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge in a statement.
In addition to the $500 million for urban areas, the supplemental funding will provide 14 seaports with $75 million for security enhancements, training, preparedness drills, equipment and planning. Twenty mass transit systems will receive another $65 million for things such as threat surveillance systems, physical security improvements, new communications systems, training and practice drills.
Other funding includes $35 million for radiological defense systems, primarily in New York and New Jersey and the Charleston, S.C., metropolitan area; $15 million for pilot projects in high-density, high-threat urban areas or to protect critical infrastructure; and $10 million for technical assistance to state and local jurisdictions.
Meanwhile, at a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearing Thursday, representatives of the National Governors Association and U.S. Conference of Mayors sparred over how best the federal government can distribute homeland security dollars.
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, speaking for the NGA, said that federal funds should flow through state capitols to local governments. Governors, he argued, are better suited than the federal government to make decisions about which towns and cities need resources. At the same time, he said, allowing cities and towns to vie for funds directly from the federal government will lead to incoherent regional planning.
But Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, co-chair of the cities and borders task force of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said that state legislatures are prone to politicizing homeland security funding, as individual legislators compete for funds for their constituents rather than cooperating to put the funding where it is needed most. That process, he said, has left major cities such as Detroit without the funding they need.
For more details on how the $700 million in homeland security grants will be allocated, click here.
Shawn Zeller contributed to this article.