Most U.S. Antiterror Funding Not Yet Distributed

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Washington and U.S. states often consider neither needs nor risks when making decisions on distribution of antiterrorism and anti-WMD grants to emergency responders around the country, according to an analysis released by House Select Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) yesterday (see GSN, April 9).

The analysis, produced by the committee’s staff, comes as states are under pressure to speed their transfer of funds from the Homeland Security Department to local emergency responders. Federal, state and local officials continue to debate how the funds should be distributed by the department’s Office for Domestic Preparedness and what is causing delays in the pipeline that Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has called a “logjam.”

More than $5 billion of the $6.3 billion appropriated by Congress since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks has not been disbursed to local emergency agencies, the Los Angeles Times reported today.

The report indicates that the federal government often granted funds without a rigorous assessment of need or risk and that nearly one-third of states made decisions on distribution of the funds without any consideration of need or risk. It also finds that while Washington has awarded grants in a timely manner, no federal equipment or training standards guide state and local spending of the funds — “leading to many instances of questionable expenditures,” according to a committee release — and that overall, little of the money has been spent because of insufficient planning and bureaucratic barriers at the local level.

States submitted statewide threat and need assessments to Homeland Security in January. The Office of Domestic Preparedness has been consolidating the plans and will use them in a bid to improve targeting of spending to prepare emergency responders for WMD and terrorist attacks (see GSN, Feb. 13).

Department Inspector General Clark Kent Ervin said this month in a report that states and local jurisdictions had been slow in spending Office for Domestic Preparedness grants but said spending was not the best measure of progress. Ervin called for measures including better reporting requirements and performance standards, quick federal development of equipment and training standards to guide grant recipients’ spending.

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