"For well over a year, New Jersey’s Congressional Delegation has, in a bipartisan manner, consistently argued that the Department of Homeland Security’s first responder grant system is seriously flawed because it focused too heavily on state minimums and raw population counts, rather than critical infrastructure and risk," said Congressman Smith, who also noted that "this legislation will provide a fair and workable grant review system that focuses assistance where the terrorism threats are greatest."

Those concerns have been heeded and incorporated into the legislation. Under Section 1805 of the proposed bill, all first responder grant applications would be ranked in priority of how each grant would "lessen the threat to, vulnerability of, and consequences for persons and critical infrastructure." The bill further specifies that threats are to be interpreted by the Department of Homeland Security by giving "greater weight to threats of terrorism based on their specificity and credibility, including any pattern of repetition."

"In plain English, HR 10 says that before there is any discussion of state minimum grants, every single application for funds needs to be ranked according to risk and known terrorist threats. Only after every grant is scored and ranked and approved for funding, are states who fall below the minimums ‘topped off’ to make sure they do not fall below the statutory minimum levels," Congressman Smith said.

Under HR 10, the state minimum thresholds are reduced from .075% per state (under current law) to either .25% for some states, or .45% for others (those who have an international border or major international port). This reduces the amount of funding that has caused sparsely populated states like Wyoming to consistently top the per-capita spending list, while freeing up hundreds of millions of funding that will now be allocated strictly in accordance to risk-based terrorism analyses.

"This is a major change in the mindset for awarding Homeland Security Grants," said Rep. Smith, adding that "under the current law, roughly 38% of all Homeland first responder dollars are set aside for states without any regard to population density, risk, or critical infrastructure. The rest is allocated, under DHS policy, strictly by population count only. Under HR 10, the risk-based model is the centerpiece of the entire award process, and the state minimums are an afterthought. This is how the program should have operated from the outset, but it’s better late than never."

"We made great strides today in our meeting with Chairman Cox to ensure that homeland security funding will be allocated based on a real threat of terrorist attack," Congressman Ferguson said. "That’s the right policy, that’s good for high-threat states like New Jersey and it should be the law of the land."

"I appreciate that Chairman Cox took the time to meet with us" late yesterday, said Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (NJ-11), New Jersey’s senior member of the House Appropriations Committee. "We reiterated to the Chairman that last month’s decision by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to increase the threat level in northern New Jersey further underscores the unique security concerns our local communities face. The increased threat level reaffirms why the national homeland security grant formula must be based strictly on threat assessment, critical infrastructure and population density."

The improvements sought by New Jersey’s Congressional delegation in HR 10 come on top of several recent homeland security successes over the past two years. For instance, Congressman Smith, as Dean of the New Jersey Delegation, convened a bipartisan meeting with DHS Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson to lay out the terrorism risks faced by New Jersey.

Shortly afterwards, DHS placed northern New Jersey into a separate funding source based solely on threat assessment, called the High Threat /Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI). Since then, New Jersey has received nearly $50 million in funds that were allocated strictly in accordance with risk from the UASI account. Over the last two years, New Jersey has received a total of $238 million in homeland security grants from DHS, and our total FY 2004 DHS grant was the 8^th largest funding total in the nation.

While the State of New Jersey has currently obligated $164 million of the $238 million appropriated and set aside for the state available, it has only drawn down $42 million, and there remains $195 million in federally awarded funds in New Jersey’s unspent balance.

For Immediate Release: October 1, 2004

Contact:  Dave Kush (202) 225-3765