From USA Today:

Hearing targets Homeland funding cuts

NYC, D.C. mayors urge lawmakers to review allocations

By Mimi Hall
USATODAY

WASHINGTON — The mayors of New York City and the nation's capital denounced the Homeland Security Department on Wednesday for cutting anti-terrorism funding for the cities that were attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. They urged Congress to review how the department doles out hundreds of millions of dollars for equipment and training.

“It is a process that appears to be fundamentally broken,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican, told the House Homeland Security Committee.

The Homeland Security Department sparked the controversy last month when it announced that grants to New York City and Washington, D.C., would be cut 40% from last year. At the same time, some smaller metropolitan areas such as Louisville and Milwaukee received increases under the $710 million grant program, which rates cities' applications based on risk and need.

The anger hasn't subsided.

At a standing-room-only hearing on the issue, politicians from both parties were unyielding in their criticism of Homeland Security.

Committee Chairman Pete King, R-N.Y., said the funding decisions raise “very real questions about the competency of this department.” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said Homeland Security's “blunders are completely out of control and growing.”

Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., who pushed to create the department in 2003, said he is “close” to being “bitterly disappointed” with its performance.

George Foresman, who runs the grants program, defended the cuts, which reduced New York's funding from $207 million in the 2005 fiscal year to $124 million for fiscal 2006. Washington's money was cut from $77.5 million to $46.5 million.

Foresman said Homeland Security used a new system to judge cities' requests for money, and emergency-management experts and responders evaluated the applications.

Under that system, Foresman said, new risks were identified. “Other urban areas have higher risks than previously understood,” he told the committee.

He also said that New York City has received 19% of the program's funding since it began in 2003, more than twice as much as Los Angeles, the next largest recipient.

“The federal government has an obligation to protect the entire nation,” he said. “We must take steps necessary to ensure that all of our high-risk areas increase their levels of capability.”

The department has said it does not plan to change the allocations — and Congress can't force it to. King said he may propose legislation that would force Homeland Security to send more money to New York City and Washington, D.C., cities he said “symbolize the very essence of the threat” against the USA since the 9/11 attacks.