Debate on anti-terror funds renewed

WASHINGTON -- Congress' nearly 20 percent cut to a key $887 million homeland security grant program last week resurrected a long-running debate: Should anti-terror grants go to only the highest-risk urban areas or to most cities in the country?

At stake is funding to purchase anti-terror equipment and boost training in New York City and surrounding areas, including Long Island, which experts say face the nation's biggest terror threat.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, however, recently told Congress she favors spreading the grants around. The nation must create "a 'homeland security architecture' that begins with small towns, cities, states . . . to make sure there is a baseline capability throughout the country," she told a Senate hearing last month.

That approach is drawing skepticism from New York lawmakers and others. Matt Mayer, who oversaw grants at the Department of Homeland Security from 2004 to 2006 and now is a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the "focus should really be on the high-risk areas."

Federal funding should be distributed to the high-risk areas based on "what do we have, what do we need, and if there is still a gap, how are they going to fill it," Mayer said.

New York uses the grants to train and coordinate police and other first responders in the city and surrounding areas, to purchase equipment including radios and radiation detectors, and to increase security at potential targets.

Five years ago, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security declared it would base its grant awards on the likely risk of terrorism and the expected consequences of an attack.

Since then the department, nudged by members of Congress outside New York, has added areas that are eligible for funding.

The Urban Area Security Initiative, which was cut by nearly $164 million last week, made $765 million available to 35 eligible urban areas in 2006; in 2010, $832.5 million was available to 64 areas.

DHS does give preferences to New York and nine other high risk areas. In 2010 those cities split $524.5 million, or two-thirds of the grant money. New York City won the largest funding pot, $151 million.

Rep. Nita Lowey (D-Harrison) pressed Napolitano about the composition of the grant program during an appropriations hearing last month.

"Will you commit once and for all to stop using the UASI program as a form of DHS pork-barrel spending and limit recipients to only high-risk, high-density urban areas?" Lowey asked.

Napolitano offered to work with Congress on the question but said grants should be distributed nationally.

"There are risks that you can identify in all areas of the country," she said. "And so one of the things that happens is that, through formula requirements of Congress, all areas of the country get at least some base level" of funding.

That was before the compromise among the White House, Senate Democrats and the GOP-controlled House on this year's spending to avoid a government shutdown.

Initially, the House GOP voted to cut the UASI grant program to $800 million from the current $887 million. Lowey then successfully amended the bill to shrink the number of eligible cities to 25.

But when Congress approved the final spending compromise, funding was cut to $723.5 million. The number of cities remained at 64.