States submit homeland security plans

In a watershed federal effort to obtain a national picture of the terrorist threat, 19 states had submitted homeland security strategies to the federal government by mid-morning Friday ahead of a key deadline Saturday.

The remaining 31 states were expected to meet the saturday deadline, according to Chris Rizzuto of the U.S. Homeland Security Department's Office for Domestic Preparedness. Rizzuto said the office is "not hearing anything from any of the states that somebody's not going to get them in [or that] they're going to have a problem."

The process is far from complete, however, since the department has indefinitely extended a separate deadline for one important part of the state assessments: the verification of raw data provided by local jurisdictions.

Initiated seven months ago, the federal consolidation of state and local information is an effort to better distribute funds that Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has said will amount to about $7.5 billion annually over the short term. The effort comes as U.S. states and cities tussle over control of the funds and Democrats and Republicans spar over the relative importance of nationwide readiness and threat-based, targeted spending.

The Homeland Security Department is required by the 2002 legislation that created it to produce a detailed national assessment of the terrorist threat as a basis for federal spending and to continually update the assessment in the future. PSComm President John Cohen, an adviser to state and local governments who has long needled the department over slow progress on the assessment, this week said the current state submissions could speed the national assessment.

"It creates an opportunity to take a huge step forward in completing a national threat assessment," Cohen said of the process. "Instead of taking three to five years" as the department has indicated, he said, "you could have one done in less than a year."

"The governors," added National Governors Association spokeswoman Christine LaPaille, have "agreed that this is a real sort of next step in terms of keeping states and America safer."

State strategies were initially due Dec. 31, 2003, at the Office for Domestic Preparedness. Besides granting states an overall extension until tomorrow, the office has extended ? indefinitely, for the moment ? the time allotted to states for verification of local information on potential threats and on needs for response equipment, facilities and training. Such verification is a central feature of a process meant in part to streamline spending and avoid funding redundant response programs.

"Various time constraints of the homeland security assessment process, as well as technical and performance issues related to the data collection tool and the data analysis tool, have impacted the ability of states to verify assessment data," the office told state officials last week in an information bulletin.

"While strategies must be submitted to ODP by Jan. 31, 2004, the data validation period will be extended to permit states or urban areas with previously submitted and/or approved strategies to review the assessment data," the office added. It said a meeting of state and federal officials will be held here "in the near future to discuss the data verification process and timelines."

Rizzuto said the office expects to set a deadline within the coming weeks for the verification, adding that "there's no problem" that has caused a need for more time. Both he and Pennsylvania Emergency Management Director David Sanko attributed the extension to the importance of the enterprise. Sanko said Washington has made it clear to states that the assessments should be reviewed carefully since they will serve as a spending "blueprint" for at least three years.

Sanko added that "there may have been a little underestimation on the creativity across the country of how enormous an appetite the 'wish list' would generate" ? a problem also cited by other sources. Pennsylvania municipalities' "appetite" for grants, Sanko said, led the state to undertake a "deconflicting" process akin to the verification for which Washington is now giving all the states extra time.

State and federal officials blamed the initial one-month delay on problems with the online system used for collecting data from cities and states. According to Rizzuto, data entry and transmission posed various problems, causing the department to alter the online tool and to dispatch technical assistance teams to city and state governments. One source said the office has not fixed the tool but has devised means to circumvent technical obstacles.

"I think everybody had some technological problems with the tool. It was challenging. I think it probably was designed at a time before everyone knew what they wanted the final product to be," Sanko said.

Cohen, who has been involved in preparing Massachusetts' state strategy, called technical difficulties "the No. 1 problem" he has encountered. "A number of these local jurisdictions became extremely frustrated with this whole process," he said, citing reports of problems related to the Homeland Security Department's instructions in addition to the technical hurdles.

Despite the difficulties, state-level participants praised the federal department for spearheading a process they said could mean big improvements in nationwide readiness.

Cohen said that "ODP really seems to have gotten it when it comes to how these funds should be used and how these funds should be tracked."

"My fear," he said, "is that the problems with the technology will undercut some of the credibility that DHS has gained, specifically through the efforts of ODP."

Added Sanko, "It was a monumental undertaking, it's something that came with a very short turnaround time, but I would say, now that it's done, that the department should be applauded for setting a deadline."