Homeland Security bid to set up regional structure could hit roadblocks

The chief sponsor of the law that created the Homeland Security Department said Tuesday that the planned creation of a regional structure for the department could meet with trouble.

Former House of Representatives majority leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, who is now senior policy adviser at the Piper Rudnick law firm, said efforts to streamline legislative oversight of the 2-year-old department could also pose problems.

Homeland Security has signaled plans to create a number of regional offices around the country in a structure that could resemble that of agencies such as the FBI, but participants in a Heritage Foundation discussion on the plan yesterday indicated the ultimate role of the offices remains unclear.

In the event's keynote speech, Armey said many of the component agencies of the department, most of which formerly stood alone or belonged to other Cabinet agencies, are already organized by region.

The boundaries of their regional offices' jurisdictions rarely coincide, he said, and Homeland Security's bid to integrate the offices is likely to run up against "parochialism" and tenacious "civic relationships."

A town that is home to a major agency office, Armey said, could be loath to give up the office if Homeland Security moves to set up a consolidated regional bureau in another location.

"That community, unfortunately, has both a congressman and a senator" to protect its interests at the expense of the department's plans, Armey said.

Armey expressed support for the principle of a regionalized Homeland Security Department. He said a regional structure could be particularly useful to remote towns that may contain critical infrastructure - he offered the example of a nuclear plant - but are too small or poor to successfully seek federal help in protecting such sites.

Whatever the merits of regionalization, according to Homeland Security-watcher Dan Kaniewski of George Washington University, the department has made clear its intention to create regional offices by requesting $3.45 million in fiscal 2005 for the purpose.

Kaniewski, who is deputy director of the university's Homeland Security Policy Institute, said Homeland Security should at least create a single contact per region for state and local officials involved in antiterrorism efforts, who now often face confusion about where to turn for help from the federal government.

Heritage Foundation homeland-security expert James Carafano, who presided over the event, said regionalization is likely to have a lasting impact on U.S. defenses. He predicted a "long, protracted conflict" against terrorist groups, likening the struggle to the Cold War.

"The decisions that we make in the next few years about how we organize homeland security will stand for generations," Carafano said.

Armey did not clearly endorse any of several options Congress is considering for streamlining legislative oversight of Homeland Security, but he repeated the oft-heard complaint that the legislature is placing an overly onerous oversight burden on the department.

The authority of the House's temporary Select Committee on Homeland Security remains fragile, and department officials are currently obliged to testify before dozens of committees on Capitol Hill. Senators this week proposed turning the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee into a standing "homeland security-government operations" panel, while the select House committee has sought permanent standing status.

"I don't think Congress has yet devised a very effective model for oversight," Armey said.

He likened the current House panel to the House Budget Committee, which Armey said was filled, when it was created in the 1970s, with members seeking to protect the budget responsibilities of other committees on which they sat. Members of the current House select committee include several chairs of established, related committees.

"Everybody is on that committee because, why? He wants to protect his legacy interests--and you've got a committee there that's a bit hamstrung," Armey said.

Armey, a longtime advocate of smaller government, said he initially thought creating the massive Homeland Security Department could lead to an overall reduction in the size of the U.S. government as the department's agencies began to share functions that each once performed for itself.

"That was probably a naive hope, but at least it was a rationale that got me through the night," he said.