Security At Any Price?
Homeland protection isn't just Job 1 in Washington; it's more like a big old government ATM
Battle lines. DHS money has been subject to all kinds of demands from a host of constituencies. The Urban Area Security Initiative was initially designed to use a risk-based formula to distribute $100 million to the nation's most vulnerable cities; it began with just seven municipalities, but after the White House and DHS were inundated with complaints from areas left off the list, the program extended eligibility to 30. This year, 80 cities and mass-transit agencies are in line for program grants. According to a report by Skinner, similar issues dogged the first three rounds of the port security grant program: Hundreds of projects deemed without merit by the grant-program staff received money from DHS, including some in Martha's Vineyard and some in St. Thomas, in the Virgin Islands. Other grant recipients used the money for purposes unrelated to homeland security. Marc Short, a DHS spokesman, says a different office now oversees the grant program; the nation's 66 most at-risk ports will be the only areas allowed to apply for grants in fiscal year 2005.
The battle lines are clearest in debates surrounding the funding formulas used to distribute grant money to the states. President Bush requested $3.36 billion in funding for DHS state and local grants for fiscal year 2006 alone. After the 9/11 attacks, Congress included a provision in the Patriot Act that required all states to receive a minimum share (0.75 percent) of the state grant money. That gobbled up 40 percent of the allocated funds; the rest was divvied up based on population. What emerged seemed curious to many: Last year, rural Wyoming received $37.74 in grants per capita, while New York, the target of repeated terrorist attacks, came away with $5.41 a head. Other big winners: the Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands (chart, Page 26).
Robots. "First responders all over this country weren't getting the money they needed," says Rep. Christopher Cox, a California Republican who heads the House Homeland Security Committee. "Political pork," adds Cox, was skewing the system. In Wyoming, police bought enough hazmat suits for every officer, as well as Miss Daisy, a robot capable of dismantling bombs. Officials in Lake County, Tenn., used federal money to help a high school buy a defibrillator for a high school basketball tournament.
Another controversial chunk of DHS money goes to fund research at colleges and universities. According to the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste, Congress has given out $100 million more to DHS education programs than requested by the president over the past two years. Some of this money--$18 million--has gone to a center at Dartmouth College (in the home state of Senate Appropriations homeland security subcommittee chair Judd Gregg) that researches cybersecurity. Congress created that center--and five others to study domestic security issues--before September 11. Gregg says he shouldn't have to apologize for maintaining their funding. "If we don't initiate think-tank approaches in responding to terrorists," he says, "then we'll be losing our best advantage in the war on terror, which is intellectual expertise."
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