DHS favors easing deadline on state security funds

The Homeland Security Department would like to ease a stringent deadline for states to disburse federal funding to local communities for counterterrorism activities, a department official said Tuesday.

"We're trying to get away from" the 45-day deadline for states to distribute the funding, David Boyd, director of wireless communications activities at the department, said at a homeland security conference.

He added that lawmakers are "intensely interested" in the requirement, but the department believes careful planning by states over the fiscal year is necessary before sending the dollars to local firefighters, police officers and other emergency "first responder" groups.

The issue became contentious after government investigations found local communities had not received or spent the nearly $14 billion in federal funding Congress has appropriated over the last three years to prepare for, prevent and respond to a terrorist attack. In response, Congress required that 80 percent of grant funding had to be distributed within the 45-day deadline.

However, an August 2004 report by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, found that most states met that deadline and the delays were frequently due to local legal and procedural requirements rather than states holding the funds.

Thus in the fiscal 2005 spending law for the department, states will have 60 days to allocate the money. President Bush reiterated the requirement in his fiscal 2006 budget proposal earlier this month, but the fiscal 2005 act only covers one year.

Last year, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Christopher Cox, R-Calif., and Maine Republican Susan Collins, chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, proposed competing legislation to permanently change the deadline.

Cox's bill would have required that states and local communities submit an outline of their priorities and spending plans before receiving the funds, which supporters argue would cut down on the necessary time states need to distribute the funding to the local level. Collins' legislation would have preserved the 60-day timeframe.

Neither bill was approved last year, but Collins re-introduced her bill in January, and Cox plans to offer a bill similar to last year's proposal. The two lawmakers will have to negotiate on the deadline before a new mandate can be sent to the president.

Also on Tuesday, Boyd made a plea to industry representatives to create information technology systems with "open architectures" and without proprietary standards. "If you don't, we'll have to," said Boyd, who oversees the department's SAFECOM project to ensure that public-safety officials can communicate across jurisdictions.

He also stressed that emergency responders need "voices first" technology rather than data and imagery devices. "A firefighter is not going to read" a handheld device while standing in a burning building, Boyd said. He said the first priority for emergency responders is communicating "with their own troops" and the second is talking across jurisdictions.

Boyd argued that federal agencies have to observe local rules and existing systems because 90 percent of wireless communications equipment is bought at the local level.