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Panel votes to cut anti-terror funds

BY GLENN THRUSH | Newsday Staff Correspondent

June 29, 2006

WASHINGTON - In a sign that New York's homeland security funding woes are far from over, a key Senate committee yesterday voted to cut anti-terror funding to high-threat areas such as New York by $20 million in 2007.

The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security voted to reduce nationwide high-threat funding from $765 million this year to $745 next year.

The decision comes two weeks after New York's federal anti-terror funding was slashed 40 percent by the Department of Homeland Security.

Earlier this month, a House subcommittee voted to cut 2007 funding to the Urban Areas Security Initiative by $15 million as part of a massive $31-billion Homeland Security Department appropriations bill, of which New York receives about $124.5 million.

"Given what we have learned in the past year from the foiled cyanide threat ... this is not adequate funding for New York or anywhere else," said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) in a statement. "This drop in funding starts us off already in a hole."