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U.S. Lawmakers Revive Risk-Based Spending Push By Joe Fiorill WASHINGTON — U.S. lawmakers are this week renewing efforts to direct more federal antiterrorism grant spending to the highest-risk potential targets (see GSN, March 10). The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee was slated today to discuss a new bill on the subject from Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine), who sought passage last year for a related bill. Meanwhile in the House of Representatives, Homeland Security Committee Chairman Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) and senior Democrat Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) yesterday introduced a new version of legislation long championed by Cox. “Three and a half years have passed since the terrorist attacks on New York and northern Virginia,” Fraternal Order of Police National President Chuck Canterbury said yesterday in offering his support for the House bill. “In this time, it has become clear that the current system of distributing federal Homeland Security grants needs to be reformed.” Current formulas for doling out Homeland Security Department emergency-response grants to state and city agencies involve population-based payments and per-state minimums. Stories of haphazard and seemingly inappropriate spending are commonplace in hearings on the matter. Lawmakers have tried in recent years — so far, to no avail — to pass laws mandating a greater place in the calculus for terrorist threat information and knowledge of infrastructural vulnerabilities. Since being sworn in March 3, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has frequently cited “risk management” as a centerpiece of his plans for the department (see GSN, March 3). In a corresponding bid to make spending more closely match federal terrorism-response priorities, President George W. Bush’s administration is seeking in its fiscal 2006 budget proposal to “restructure” about two-thirds of the Homeland Security grant money in ways that would see more of it spent directly by Washington. The resulting decline in “baseline” funds to states, however, has sparked opposition to the plan in Congress. “Drastically reducing this baseline level of funding,” Collins wrote the Senate Budget Committee last month, “will make it virtually impossible for states and localities to conduct necessary emergency planning activities.” As a result, Congress is once again taking up members’ own plans for reform, which also would cut baseline funds but are generally less drastic than the Bush budget plan. Collins’ bill would cut minimum per-state payments from 0.75 percent to 0.55 percent of the overall grant budget. It would make the percentage “sliding,” with the smallest and least populous states receiving 0.55 percent and larger, more densely populated states receiving a bigger portion. In doling out the remaining money, Homeland Security would have greater latitude to consider states’ and regions’ vulnerabilities and existing capabilities. The House bill would set up a specific antiterrorism grant process, separate for the first time from spending on what the bill terms “pre-Sept. 11” needs that are not strictly related to terrorism. The antiterrorism grants to states, regions and American Indian tribes would be “for the primary purpose of improving the ability of first responders to prevent, prepare for, respond to or mitigate threatened or actual terrorist attacks, especially those involving weapons of mass destruction.” “The Department of Homeland Security should seek to allocate homeland security funding for first responders to meet nationwide needs,” states the bill, which seeks to have state spending better reflect central planning and to have grants better reflect threats. The House legislation goes farther than Collins’ bill in basing spending on risk, reducing the minimum budgetary percentage to 0.25 percent for states that are not thought to be at particularly high risk for a terrorist attack. The Fraternal Order of Police praised the Cox-Thompson bill for seeking to require Homeland Security “to allocate homeland security assistance funds to states or regions based upon risk and then provide, if necessary, additional funds to those states that have not met a minimum threshold of funding.”
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