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U.S. Was Wrong to Shift Bioterror Funds Based on Nonexpenditure Allegations, Auditors Say By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — The United States was wrong when it alleged last year that states and cities were failing to spend much of their federal bioterrorism funding, federal auditors said in a report released yesterday, rejecting the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s basis for shifting fiscal 2004 funding from local and state grants to other bioterrorism programs (see GSN, Feb. 8). “Jurisdictions have expended a substantial amount of Public Health Preparedness and Response for Bioterrorism program funds,” the Government Accountability Office said in the Feb. 28 report. Senators Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), respectively the top Democrats on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, commissioned the report last year and issued a statement this week urging President George W. Bush’s administration to reverse the shift. “If HHS had looked closely at what states and localities were doing with their grants, as GAO did, it would have realized that states were using the grant program to better prepare themselves for a bioterror attack,” Lieberman said. “Instead of working with jurisdictions to figure out what was going on, HHS reprogrammed the funds and undermined the ability of states and local governments to improve the very bioterrorism capabilities the grants were intended to create. States and local governments need more bioterrorism funding, not less.” Bioterrorism preparedness grants from Health and Human Services’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to states and municipalities increased “almost twentyfold” in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks on the United States, the auditors wrote. Last year, however, the department shifted $55 million of the grant funds to support the Cities Readiness Initiative, meant to boost cities’ capacity for delivering medicine in emergencies; to boost capacity at CDC quarantine stations; and to bolster the Biosense program, which aims to detect emerging diseases by collecting and analyzing data from hospitals, pharmacies and other entities around the country. In explaining the shift, Health and Human Services said jurisdictions were failing to expend or designate for expenditure enough of the funds with sufficient speed. Contradicting that claim, the audit office said that of the funds it studied, more than four-fifths of fiscal 2002 funds and more than half of fiscal 2003 funds were spent in a timely manner, while more than five-sixths of fiscal 2001 and 2002 funds and more than three-fourths of fiscal 2003 funds were obligated quickly enough. The office was also asked to report on factors jurisdictions cited as contributing to whatever spending delays did occur and on what the jurisdictions did to address such problems. “Many jurisdictions reported facing challenges, partly related to administrative processes, that delayed their obligation and expenditure of bioterrorism funds,” it said. “These included work force issues such as hiring freezes, contracting and procurement processes to ensure responsible use of public funds and lengthy information technology upgrades. Some jurisdictions have simplified these processes to expedite the obligation and expenditure of funds.” The National Association of County and City Health Officials issued a statement yesterday calling on the Bush administration and Congress to restore the funds to states and localities. The association also blasted what it called a $130 million cut in local and state bioterrorism programs in the White House’s fiscal 2006 budget proposal. “It’s outrageous,” said the association’s executive director, Patrick Libbey, “that the proposed budget reduces funding for local health departments to fight bioterrorism and would force them to scale back their efforts.”
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