From New York Daily News:

Get N.Y. the money, Mr. President

Wednesday, June 7th, 2006

No less an authority than Rudy Giuliani has rendered the ultimate verdict on the Department of Homeland Security's decision to slash New York City's federal anti-terror funding. Plainly and simply, Giuliani sees incompetence.

Similarly, Tom Kean, former chairman of the 9/11 commission, says the department turned thumbs down on paying for exemplary programs that "should be a model for the nation." Kean also questioned the wisdom of allowing Homeland Security to base its dollar allocations on the work of anonymous panels operating in secret.

When it comes to emergency preparedness, Giuliani and Kean are two of the smartest guys around. Having studied the war on terror upclose, they are experts in the extraordinarily broad range of defenses that a city like New York, the world's No. 1 terror target, must mount if we are to have a chance at fending off disaster.

New Yorkers aren't as versed in the best ways to link emergency communications, or how to pick up radioactivity, or what to make of intelligence reports flowing from abroad - but New Yorkers do have finely tuned B.S. detectors. And so do all the late-night comics who are ridiculing Secretary Michael Chertoff's incompetence. Which starts with the rules his bureaucrats established for selecting anti-terror programs that were worthy of funding.

The regs favored buying things over paying for manpower and training, no matter how vital the manpower or training was. So, Chertoff smiles at paying for armored vests for cops, but he frowns at picking up the salaries of the officers who patrol in them. He's happy to buy haz-mat suits for firefighters, but he doesn't want to train firefighters to wear them.

The shortsighted, wrongheaded outrageousness of Chertoff's thinking screams forth when you run down just some of the ways the city had hoped to spend U.S. anti-terror money. There were plans to:

· Prepare the Fire Department to face multiple chemical, biological or nuclear attacks.

· Provide continuing emergency response training to firefighters and fire officers.

· Devote funding to the NYPD counterterrorism bureau, which analyzes threats, and Operation Atlas, which puts as many as 1,000 anti-terror cops on the street daily.

· Boost security for the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg and Queensboro bridges.

· Create a lower Manhattan security zone, complete with surveillance cameras.

· Develop a broadband wireless communication system for public safety agencies across the metropolitan area.

· Set up systems to detect radiation and biohazards in the air and water and gauge their movement in winds and currents.

· Draft an isolation and quarantine program to be used in an epidemic outbreak.

· Buy a boat to enable the FDNY to respond to a chemical, biological or radiation attack by water.

Using a half-baked scoring system as complex as the tax code, Chertoff's evaluators gave top marks to a program to disseminate emergency readiness information to the public, including pet owners, while flunking the NYPD counterterrorism center. Nothing could better sum up how disconnected from reality Homeland Security was.

Yet Chertoff is holding fast in refusing to put federal funding where it really belongs. That's in New York and Washington, which also suffered a 40% cut in aid. He needs to change his mind, or be made to change his mind, and all his nutty rules must go. Only one person has the power to compel such action: President Bush.

Rep. Pete King, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, said yesterday that if Chertoff doesn't come up with more money for New York, he'll take the matter to Bush. That's good, but King shouldn't have to storm the Oval Office. Bush, who has refrained from canning Chertoff, should order him to rectify his incompetence posthaste.