Security funds reach small towns, but at a trickle

Chief Fire Marshal Richard Morris leans against the boardwalk rail and looks out through the morning mist at the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant across the harbor. Behind him are railroad tracks that carry tankers full of hazardous material through at least once a day. In another building, a stone's throw away, is the town's central sewer system.

"Are we ready for a nuclear outburst? Probably nobody is," he says. "But we have an evacuation plan in place. We're up to speed if there is a terrorist attack."

Welcome to a potential small town ground zero and an illustration of what is working and what remains to be done in the nation's ongoing effort to rebuild its civil defenses.

Almost four years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, more than $7 billion dollars have been appropriated for the nation's first responders, yet only a fraction of it - just over 1.2 billion - has actually gotten to the nation's emergency personnel.

In Connecticut, as in most states across the nation, much of that new homeland-security money is caught in bureaucratic bottlenecks. The causes of delay range from the need to create new departments on the state level to disperse the funds to arcane purchasing requirements. In other cases, grants have been given, but manufacturers of security equipment, like bomb resistant robots, have large back orders, and the equipment has yet to reach firefighters.

There have also been some questionable uses of funds, such as commissioning a homeland-security rap song in Washington, D.C., buying a paging system for a state fair in South Dakota, and acquiring Segway scooters for bomb-squad personnel in Santa Clara, Calif.

But in the past six months, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and dozens of states have finally begun to clarify their missions, assessing and prioritizing risks as they streamline their grantmaking processes.

In April, DHS put out its first "National Preparedness Goal," which lays out specific criteria to give the states and localities guidance on the best way to utilize their homeland-security dollars. The House has also passed a bill that would require all future homeland-security grants to be distributed based on potential terrorist risk. A similar bill is pending in the Senate.

Combined, all of the efforts are slowly but surely beginning to make a difference on the local level. "We've got a couple of years under our belts now, so we're getting to the point where we can start defining at the very least what the bare minimum essential capabilities and standards are," says Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University in Washington.

Locals like Chief Morris are beginning to see that progress. But there remains frustration born from paperwork and bureaucratic technicalities.

"The money did get stuck and it's still stuck," says Morris. "The gaps remain in the understanding of what is acceptable stuff, what is truly a need and what is a wish. Homeland Security has figured that out through the first two or three years.... We'll see how well with this round of grants due this month."

Page: 1 | 2