Easier For States To Receive Security Grants In 2009
Nov 13, 2008 1:49 PM
The Department of Homeland Security has plans to dole out $3 billion in counterterrorism grants next year to state and local agencies with far-fewer strings attached than in past years, in a concession to sharply tightening budgets at all levels of government.
The total amount mandated by Congress to go to the 50 states and the District, as well as funds for ports, transit systems, emergency managers, tribes, nonprofit groups and others, remains close to last year's levels. According to the Washington Post, DHS acted months earlier in revealing specific amounts that will go to the states and the 62 designated high-risk cities.
The DHS move marks a response to criticism from a Democratic Congress and increasingly restive state and local leaders. They have complained that the Bush administration's domestic security officials have focused on terrorism at the expense of other law enforcement priorities, such as fighting drugs, gangs and violent crime.
That tension is expected to intensify as the nation's financial crisis deepens. The incoming Democratic administration will face hard funding choices as it tries to improve ties with state and local partners who must choose between keeping police officers on the beat; maintaining costly equipment, systems and supplies intended to respond to a terrorist attack; and other needs.
"The economic crisis is placing a great strain on local resources, forcing officials to decide between, say, a school-lunch program and cops on the street," said David Heyman, homeland security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "This sounds like the department being very responsive to years of deep-seated complaints from local authorities about the enormous federal funding bureaucracy."
An aide on the House Homeland Security Committee, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of panel rules, said bluntly to the Post, "There is no more room for folks from state and local government to complain. They got pretty much what they wanted."
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