From New York Daily News:

Homeland's pork
BY JESS WISLOSKI and TRACY CONNOR
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Sunday, June 4th, 2006

What's more important - keeping cops on the busy, world-famous Brooklyn Bridge or installing surveillance cameras in a small Alaskan fishing village?

That's what Rep. Anthony Weiner wants to know in light of Homeland Security's decision to slash the city's anti-terrorism funding by 40% last week.

Weiner (D-Queens, Brooklyn) is outraged that while the Big Apple got shortchanged, Homeland Security is footing the bill for dubious projects in other parts of the country.

The $200,000 spent for 80 cameras in Dillingham, Alaska - population 2,400 and 600 miles from a major city - is just one example.

A report by Weiner being released today also cites $3,500 in federal cash spent on kennels for stray animals in the unlikely event of a terrorist attack on California's Modoc County.

Then there's the $36,000 grant to ensure none of the millions spent in Kentucky's bingo halls goes to fund terrorism.

"While the Big Apple struggles to do more with less, it's Christmas in June for small cities that obviously don't need the money," Weiner fumed.

The boondoggles are underwritten by lump-sum Homeland Security funds equally divided among the 50 states.

It divvies up a separate pool of money among 46 high-threat metropolitan areas - and that's where New York City lost nearly half its allocation.

Despite outrage about the cuts, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said she doesn't think Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff will cough up more cash.

"Honestly, I don't know what power he has to change things," she said at a joint press conference with Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), head of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Both accused Chertoff and the Bush administration of playing politics.

"I never know who's making the decisions in this administration," Clinton said King later said he would hold hearings on the cuts.

Homeland Security spokesman Jarrod Agen agreed the feds are not backpedaling from their allocations, which hiked funding for heartland outposts like Omaha and St. Louis.

"We're not changing the grant funding," he said flatly.

While officials offered to meet with New York's congressional delegation, they will alter the bottom line only if the city can prove a "substantive factual error" was made.

Like Homeland Security's contention that New York has no national monuments or icons?

Apparently not.

In a letter to Clinton, Chertoff defended that analysis, saying landmarks like the Empire State Building and Brooklyn Bridge were counted toward New York's score, under the infrastructure categories.