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U.S. Response I: States Rush to Assess Terrorism Threat, Define Strategies By Joe Fiorill In a process launched July 1, state homeland security agencies are to submit to the department their statewide assessments of the threat of terrorist attacks using weapons of mass destruction. These reports, expected also to include the states’ planned strategies for preventing and dealing with such attacks, are due by Dec. 31 to the department’s Office for Domestic Preparedness, formerly part of the Justice Department. Among other uses, the data will be provided to the DHS Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate, which is working on a national threat assessment, a DHS official said yesterday. The information will also determine how the federal government distributes billions of dollars in funding to state and local emergency responders. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said last week that he expects “about $7.5 billion” yearly to be available to state and local governments over the short term, including ODP emergency responder grants, ODP Urban Area Security Initiative funds and Assistance to Firefighters grants from DHS’s Federal Emergency Management Agency. About $4 billion in DHS funding will be available this fiscal year to state and local governments, according to DHS, with the bulk of the money channeled through ODP’s emergency responder grants. In terms of contributing to a better national picture of the terrorist threat, the statewide assessments are a “great first step, and if that’s where it ends, it’s of little value,” said PSComm President John Cohen, who advises state and local governments on homeland security matters. Cohen contributed to a recent Progressive Policy Institute report criticizing the Bush administration’s handling of homeland security (see GSN, July 24). Among the report’s recommendations was a call for urgent work to complete a national threat assessment, which observers on all sides have called crucial to better deployment of resources to protect the United States against a terrorist attack. Interviewed this week, Cohen credited DHS with taking some steps toward a comprehensive threat assessment ― ODP, for example, requires cities to conduct threat assessments before they can receive the bulk of funding they are awarded under the office’s Urban Area Security Initiative ― but said the process should be broader in scope and “should have been done about a year and a half ago.” “Why has it taken 20 months for this to start? … Now that we’ve started it, is the abbreviated time frame going to impact the accuracy?” he asked. The DHS official acknowledged that Dec. 31 is a “pretty tight deadline” but said the new urgency reflects changes in the homeland security environment since 1999, when the first assessments were submitted to ODP. “It’s a lot different than the last time around. … It wasn’t a top priority within the states, let’s just say, to get these things done,” said the official, citing changes such as new fears of a WMD attack following the September 2001 attacks on the United States and the resulting availability of new funds for counterterrorism efforts. New Focus for DHS, States In one sense, this year’s plans are merely the states’ latest submissions in a process that has existed for four years, but DHS and state officials indicated the process has taken on a new national importance with the 2001 attacks and the resulting creation of DHS early this year. The DHS official said ODP was already seeking an “overarching” assessment process with the 1999 submissions but that many states viewed the process as more narrowly tied to grant money at the time. State officials, including Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency Director David Sanko, indicated this week that DHS has made it clear this year that it is seeking an overall picture of counterterrorism needs and strategies, not just data to be used in determining grants. Pennsylvania is submitting “a much more comprehensive document” than in the past, according to Sanko, who called it “encouraging” that ODP appears set to begin basing funding on threat, rather than on widely criticized population-based formulas now in use. ODP has provided handbooks to states and local jurisdictions to help them navigate the process, and state and local submissions of data are coordinated and standardized via an online system created by ODP for the purpose. Local jurisdictions are to provide most of the data, submitting precise information about sites perceived as potential targets, the likely outcomes of attacks on such sites and local agencies’ resources for responding to an attack. “Never before,” according to the state handbook, “have these precise requirements been as well identified for planning, organizing, equipping, training and exercising local jurisdictions and states to respond to a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) terrorism incident.” The local jurisdiction handbook indicates that local risk assessments being carried out for the state submissions constitute “the first step in ensuring nationwide preparedness.” “It’s actually pretty good,” Cohen said of ODP’s guidance to states and municipalities in preparing the assessments. He said ODP is providing more detail to state and local authorities and better guiding them through the assessment and strategy development processes. If jurisdictions follow the steps laid out by ODP, Cohen said, “We’ll have taken a major step in doing a national threat assessment.” DHS Accused of Slowness, Lack of Overall Strategy While some critics acknowledge the state assessment process is a step forward, many continue to charge DHS with moving too slowly on the national assessment, lacking a discernible overarching strategy for distributing resources to counter terrorism and failing to consult adequately with state and local authorities in its bid to assess the WMD threat nationwide. The Council on Foreign Relations’ Jamie Metzl, who directed a study released in June that indicated U.S. emergency responders are largely unprepared for a terrorist attack, said federal authorities “keep confusing self-assessment with national standards” (see GSN, June 30). State and local authorities, according to Metzl, must be brought into the process of defining risk and need, not simply asked to provide data in a standardized format. What is needed, he said, is for “everybody to come together and develop a national framework of what does it mean to be prepared.” Cohen warned that this year’s process will be of little value without subsequent feedback to state and local jurisdictions and frequent updates in the years to come. He said the federal government should “blend” the kinds of data being collected in the current effort with broader intelligence and other kinds of information to establish a national list prioritizing potential terrorist targets, which would then be “bounced back” to state and local agencies to help them not only to prevent or respond to an attack, but also to conduct their assessments and develop strategies. “Part of the problem,” said Cohen, “is that you have ODP distributing a survey and asking for answers to very specific questions so that they can qualify the level of preparedness, without telling anybody really clearly what it is they’re being prepared to confront.” “Somebody, somewhere, knows what the risk is that we face in defined terms, but that hasn’t been shared with the people who are out there on the front lines,” Cohen said. Confusion Apparent in the States State homeland security officials indicated various approaches to preparing their submissions to ODP, with some confusion apparent as to the nature of the undertaking and the precise requirements. Although Missouri Homeland Security Director Tim Daniels credited ODP with providing “a lot of guidance” and a “very tightly controlled template,” some other states’ homeland security offices said they will mainly repackage existing data, while others said they intend to use the federal template only as a loose guideline for their assessments. The DHS official said all states are expected to use ODP’s data collection system so the information received by DHS is in a standard format and, therefore, usable in national planning efforts. In addition, some states have expressed frustration at the new format for submissions to ODP, according to observers familiar with the process. Besides the handbooks it provided to state and local authorities, ODP has been conducting regional conferences on the process and is making teams of advisers available to states and local jurisdictions. It is unclear whether all states will be able to meet the Dec. 31 deadline for submitting the assessments and strategies. While stopping short of Cohen’s characterization of the six months allotted as an “abbreviated” schedule, Pennsylvania’s Sanko called the time frame “aggressive.” Officials from other states said the time allotted is sufficient. “It’s a very big job. … It’s critically important that it get done,” Sanko said in defense of the deadline. Better Grant Distribution Could Be Ahead At a conference last week in Arlington, Va., Ridge linked this year’s state assessments with a bid to base federal grants for responders on locally driven assessments, rather than on the unpopular population-based formulas. “Our department has asked the states and the locals to submit statewide homeland security plans … so that, from the 2005 budget forward, the money can be expended consistent with a plan that is state-coordinated but driven from the local government up,” the secretary told emergency personnel from local agencies around the country. “We want those plans by the end of the year, so that, in future years, we can make those allocations and distributions to the state, knowing where those dollars are going to be invested and knowing that those decisions were made from local government on up,” Ridge said. Criticism of the current formula for funding emergency responders came to a head at a July 17 hearing of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee. Several representatives, as well as invited speakers, criticized the current approach. “Two things are clear: First responders are underfunded, and a better process must be put in place to coordinate and disseminate these funds,” Representative Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) said at the hearing. At last week’s conference, Ridge stressed the importance of locally driven counterterrorism work, as opposed to state-controlled efforts. Amid debate between states and local governments over who should get the bulk of federal funding for homeland security, he threatened that states that are slow to fund local jurisdictions could see their funds withheld. “We will make sure that it gets down to you, even to the extent if we ― and I don’t think we’re going to have to do this, but one of the things you do have in this town is you have a little leverage. And if we said to the governors, ‘You don’t get your 20 or 25 percent until the other 75 percent is distributed,’ I suspect they’d send it out the door pretty quickly,” Ridge said.
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