Where did the buck stop?

In the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, Americans realized that they had to do a better job of protecting the country from domestic attacks. Airports needed better security, the FBI and CIA had to reassess their policies and procedures — and start talking with each other. Finally, the people closest to the scene of the potential crimes — local governments — had to be prepared.

Congress swiftly responded in the weeks following the attacks by appropriating funds for first responders. Since 2001, more than $23 billion has been made available to state and local governments to prepare for and respond to acts of terrorism. Between $8 billion and $9 billion of that money, however, is still in the administrative pipeline at various levels of government.

Although the federal government recently streamlined grant applications, most money goes directly to the states for disbursal, and each has unique rules and guidelines. “One of the biggest situations is the reimbursement from the federal government back to local government,” says National Association of Counties (NACo) Legislative Director Ed Rosado. Smaller counties and cities, Rosado says, have had difficulties with state and federal procurement guidelines.

Decatur, Ga., City Manager Peggy Merriss, a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Task Force on Homeland Security Funding, agrees. The committee, charged with pinpointing the funding bottlenecks, submitted recommendations to the DHS in mid-June. The long list of recommendations includes everything from changing state and local legislative and procurement procedures to expediting the spending of homeland security funds to establishing an Office of the Comptroller within the DHS to assume complete financial responsibility over grant programs.

Few communities receiving funds

After canvassing 215 cities, the Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Conference of Mayors recently revealed that 90 percent of the respondents had received no funding under the $1.5 billion Federal First Responder/Critical Infrastructure program, and that 80 percent had received no funding under the $556 million State Domestic Preparedness Program. Three out of four of the survey’s respondents said other jurisdictions in their area received the funding, and 89 percent said their county governments received the money.

An April 27 report from the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Homeland Security revealed that of the $6 billion in terrorism preparedness grants allocated to states in the FY 2003 budget, 85 percent had not been spent by states and local governments. In fact, the report stated, that “roughly $5.2 billion in DHS grant money remains in the administrative pipeline, waiting to be used by our first responders to, among other things, enhance the interoperability of their communications, purchase protective gear and radiological, biological and chemical agent detectors, and improve training and exercises for responding to terrorist events. Under President Bush’s most recent budget proposal, another $2.6 billion likely will be added to the pipeline by the end of the year.”

Minnetonka, Minn., Mayor Karen Anderson says that federal monies have begun to trickle down to counties and cities since January when the problem became highlighted in the media. Anderson — who is a past president of the Washington, D.C.-based National League of Cities and a member of the state and local officials senior advisory committee to the Homeland Security Advisory Council says that cities documented more than a year ago that they had already spent more than $2 billion of their own money improving first-response capabilities. “We began complaining early on … suspicious that the money would not get to first responders as intended,” she says.

All states are required to develop a Homeland Security Strategy to receive federal funding. With the exception of a few direct funding grants — such as the Firefighter Investment and Response Enhancement (FIRE) Act Grant — cities and counties are responsible for submitting grant applications at the state and federal levels. When a grant is approved, the local government must spend the money before being reimbursed by the state. States can keep 20 percent of the funds for administration but are required to pass 80 percent of the funds to the local level within 45 days of receipt.

Nearly half of the states determined that the county was the local level. In those cases, money was distributed to the counties but not to the cities where the first responders were, Anderson says.

Dr. Frances Edwards, director of emergency preparedness for San Jose, blames the state for the funding backlogs in her city. In California, money is disbursed to the individual counties. Rather than passing the money to local elected officials to disburse to county government, funding is overseen by appointed county committees, called administering authorities. The group usually includes a county sheriff, fire chief, police chief and representatives of the local health department.

The result is that all of the largest California cities have been denied their per capita share of homeland security funding. Los Angeles County has 80 cities, with 40 percent of its population in Los Angeles. There, the administering authority kept one-third of the money for the county in excess of its per capita share; gave a third to Los Angeles, 10 percent less than its per capita share; and divided a third among the remaining cities in the county, including Long Beach, which houses 25 percent of the county’s population.

San Jose, California’s third largest city and 11th largest in the nation, is home to 53.6 percent of Santa Clara County’s population. To date, San Jose has received 6.6 percent, or $580,000, of $10.5 million that DHS sent the county. To make matters worse, of the $25 million spent by the city since Sept. 11, 2001, $11 million for police and $600,000 for fire, is not reimbursable.

Local spending continues

Most cities and counties still spend money for terrorism response training in addition to infrastructure improvements with little or no funds or the possibility of repayment. First responders, with the exception of management personnel, must receive that training on the job and include emergency management, public works, utility workers and others beyond police and fire.

The DHS Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) grant program takes up some of the slack for high-threat urban areas. However, in FY 2004, only 50 cities qualified for UASI funds. The top recipient, New York, received $47 million, and the last city on the list, San Antonio, received $6 million of $650 million total money allocated through UASI. “Quite frankly, the most difficult challenge elected officials are confronted with is to prepare their communities for the unthinkable in an environment where money is tight,” Edwards says.

Two separate homeland security funding issues — the formula and distribution — are currently under discussion in Congress, says DHS spokesperson Valerie Smith. “What we’re talking about comes down to procurement logs in states,” she says. “We’ve tried to streamline the application process at the federal level by consolidating applications and making them all available on one Web site — www.dhs.gov/grants,” Smith says. She adds that local governments will only have to report 2004 grants to the states, who will be held accountable at the federal level, thereby cutting some of the red tape.

Cutting back funds

While all the money earmarked for homeland security has not reached the intended targets, proposals for more funding cuts are under way. For example, the combined funding proposals for law enforcement assistance programs at the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security is $3.251 billion in the proposed FY 2005 budget — a reduction of $1.57 billion from the $4.908 billion in FY 2004.

The National Association of Chiefs of Police called funding in the president’s 2005 budget “unacceptable.” The proposed cuts to the three primary state and local law enforcement assistance programs — the Local Law Enforcement Block Grant (LLEBG), the Edward Byrne Memorial Grant Program (BYRNE), and the Community Oriented Policing Services Program (COPS) — may explain why.

The Justice Department has proposed consolidating the Byrne and LLEBG programs into a single grant program called the Justice Assistance Grant Program, which would be funded at $508 million. In FY 2004 the Byrne program received $659 million, and the LLEGB program received $225 million.

The COPS program received $756 million in FY 2004, but the proposed budget includes only $97 million for FY 2005. The UASI grant, which offers help to major cities considered high risk terrorism targets, on the other hand, will see a vast increase in funding — from $866 million in FY 2004 to $1.446 billion — should the proposed FY 2005 budget be approved.

Some fear that the FIRE Act program, which sends funds directly to local fire departments, could become consolidated with other programs and funding could be cut. The president’s budget for FY 2004 included $500 million for the program, which received $750 million in appropriations from Congress. While the Senate passed a resolution recently that would restore the funding to its FY 2004 level, the House Appropriations Committee released its Department of Homeland Security Bill, which would reduce FIRE funding to $600 million in FY 2005.

The FIRE Act grant program has received $5 billion worth in requests over the last two years but only has awarded grants totaling 10 percent of that, according to the International Association of Fire Chiefs. Alan Caldwell, director of government relations for the group, says securing continuing funding for the program is a top priority. “We like the FIRE Act [because] the funds go directly from the federal government to the fire departments,” Caldwell says, adding that the grants are peer reviewed, competitive and require a co-payment from each jurisdiction.

In 2003, 97 percent of respondents to a U.S. Department of Agriculture study said the FIRE Act program had a positive impact on their department’s ability to handle fire or fire-related incidents. The program, however, has been moved from the United States Fire Administration to the Office for Domestic Preparedness as part of a DHS effort to create a “one-stop shop” for state and local grant funding.

While no single source can be held accountable for the funding problems at the local level, the recommendations of the Task Force on Homeland Security Funding have shed light on the main culprits: lack of risk-based funding and overtime reimbursement; the federal reimbursement requirement; communication gaps at all levels of government and the facts that state and local governments are not equipped to deal with the complex grant system and do not have the infrastructures to meet the new workload. Whether or not those problems are addressed before the next assault on our nation’s security is now in the hands of the federal government.

Sibley Fleming is an Atlanta-based freelancer.