From The Security Fund Sweepstakes
If terrorists attack North Yarmouth, Maine, the tiny hamlet plans to be ready. With a population of just 3,200 and very few businesses -- not even a Starbucks or a McDonald's -- North Yarmouth can be tough to find on state maps. But that's not stopping its all-volunteer fire department from getting equipped in a big-city way. It's about to purchase a brand new, state-of-the art tanker truck that can hold enough water to douse a towering inferno, at a price tag of a quarter-million dollars. And by the way, you and I are providing the cash. Most of the funding for this truck comes from taxpayer money, courtesy of a $225,000 federal grant from the Department of Homeland Security.Why does North Yarmouth need homeland security money? Deputy Fire Chief David Hyde explains that "if terrorists should tamper with the water supply and the pumping system should go down and we didn't have hydrants, we could take water from our local rivers and fill this truck." The next obvious question: What are the chances that Al Qaeda will target North Yarmouth? "I'd say very low," Hyde admits. But the federal money was there, he adds, and the firefighters had other needs, so they took it. "It would be foolish of us not to try," he says. "We saw others being successful at it, so we gave it a shot."
You can't define pork-barrel politics any better. Since 9/11, federal money for "first responders" like local police, fire and emergency personnel has totaled more than $12 billion -- and paid for lots of things that won't keep terrorists awake at night. While cities like New York, Washington and Los Angeles strain to shore up security at bridges, ports and buildings, remote areas facing far less risk are being treated like Fort Knox. It's the old political game of giving everyone a generous slice of the pie.
Many of those small communities never even had to demonstrate a security need. "It's as if they've won the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes," says Rep. Chris Cox of California, chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security. "They have to find a way to spend the money."
That must be why one Texas town, according to a state audit, spent federal money to buy a trailer that's used to cart lawn mowers to "lawn mower drag races." Or why another town mentioned in the same audit was tickled pink to pour homeland security money into its "mushroom festival."
Shortchanging the Likely Targets
Congress set this mess in motion when it decided to divvy up much of the homeland security money as if it were one more revenue sharing program. Forty percent of the funds for terrorism preparedness would be divided evenly among all 50 states. In 2003, according to a report by Cox's Homeland Security Committee, that formula mandated that each state receive at least $17.5 million.It's no coincidence that the plan, rushed through Congress as part of the Patriot Act in 2001, was shepherded along by a Senator from a small rural state -- Patrick Leahy of Vermont, then the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. States like Vermont, with low populations, are the big winners. Wyoming, which accounts for .17 percent of the nation's population, came in first with $35.30 per capita in federal grants in 2003, according to an analysis by Veronique de Rugy, a scholar at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute. Coming in second was Leahy's Vermont, and other states in the top ten include Alaska, Montana and North and South Dakota. New York, already hit twice by terrorists, was third from the bottom, and California -- whose Los Angeles Airport was the target of a terror plot in 1999 -- was dead last, with $4.70 in funding per capita. Small wonder that Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer of New York, and Dianne Feinstein of California, have argued that their states are getting dangerously shortchanged.
They can point to experts who generally agree that terrorists are much more likely to target a highly populated area. Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic House member from Indiana who served as vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, says, "I would be perfectly comfortable making the argument that New York City ought to get more than Southern Indiana on a proportional basis, because that's where the threat is. [Terrorists] clearly intend to go after targets that would cause maximum casualties and great disruption to the American economy."
The report of Hamilton's 9/11 Commission concluded: "Homeland security assistance should be based strictly on an assessment of risks and vulnerabilities. Congress should not use this money as a pork barrel."
Easier said than done. Elected officials have no incentive to say that their state or town is not vulnerable to terrorism, notes de Rugy. "Basically, it's an entitlement to them," she says. "They want to keep this money flowing their way. The logic is that every state could potentially be at risk, so every state should get a minimum."
That argument leads to ludicrous purchases, even when the money is being spent, broadly, on security. Little Colchester, Vermont, spent $58,000 to buy a search-and-rescue vehicle capable of breaking through concrete to rescue victims in collapsed buildings. Big worries for a farming and recreational town with 18,000 residents and no structure taller than a five-story Hampton Inn. In rural Washington State, $63,000 was spent on a decontamination unit that ended up in a warehouse because there is no HAZMAT team to use it. North Pole, Alaska, with less than 2,000 people, received $557,400 to spend on rescue and communications equipment. And Grand Forks County, North Dakota, population 65,000, spent $1.5 million in federal money to buy decontamination tents, gear to find weapons of mass destruction, and more biochemical suits than the number of police officers available to wear them.
Don't Mess With Our Money
It's certainly true that no one knows where terrorists might strike next, and some remote places have critical infrastructure -- nuclear plants, say, or military bases -- that put them at heightened risk. But none of the locales above can credibly claim to be top worries of our Homeland Security department.Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, assesses the dangers differently. "It's a mistake to assume that the risk occurs just in big cities; all states continue to have vulnerabilities," Collins says. "My state, for example, has got one of the longest international borders. It has more than 3,000 miles of coastline. It has a major shipping port, international airports, military installations, and two of the 9/11 terrorists started their journey of death and destruction from Portland, Maine." She is referring to the two terrorists who flew from Portland to Boston, where they boarded the plane they would fly into the World Trade Center.
No one would deny that major shipping and land ports, in particular, need beefed-up security. Calais, a busy port of entry in Maine, just across the river from New Brunswick, Canada, received funding for motion sensors and land and air surveillance. That's money well spent. But another strategy seems to be at work if you look at a press release from Collins's office this past March. Trumpeting that Maine has received nearly $17 million this year for "homeland security efforts," Collins is quoted as saying that the grants "also provide half of the state of Maine's Emergency Management for non-homeland security disaster prevention, mitigation and response."
When Reader's Digest questioned her about homeland security funding being used for non-related disaster relief, Collins said, "How can you really separate the two? A firefighter uses the same gear and training whether the fire is the result of a terrorist attack or a natural disaster." You might call that the North Yarmouth defense.
Other localities have discovered that this "dual-use" rationale comes in very handy. Lake County, Tennessee, used $30,000 in federal grant money to buy a defibrillator to have on hand for basketball games at its high school. In a statement, the Homeland Security department says the county's defibrillator "is an allowable item under the medical supplies category" for possible terrorist attacks. Similarly, The Steamship Authority in Massachusetts received $900,000 for the resort island of Martha's Vineyard to upgrade one of its harbors with fencing and video cameras. Again, the Homeland Security department said these projects "reflect allowable expenditures." A Vineyard harbormaster, meanwhile, was quoted in the Vineyard Gazette saying, "Quite honestly, I don't know what we're going to do, but you don't turn down grant money."
With as few as two percent of cargo containers being examined nationally, you'd think more money would go to major ports instead of to a wealthy vacation spot like Martha's Vineyard.
Big cities are rolling out the dual-use argument too. In a recent press release, Newark, New Jersey, touts how it used homeland security grants to help purchase ten new garbage trucks with air conditioning and power windows. A city spokeswoman told the Associated Press that the trucks have a homeland security function in a potential terrorist attack, because "they have special apparatus on them for handling waste or debris."
There's little sign that reform will come easily, or soon. Consider what happened last fall when Rep. Chris Cox got a provision passed in the House to reduce the percentage of funds that must be parceled equally among the states. The Senate, where members representing rural states have more clout, killed the measure. The clear message: Don't mess with our money.
Susan Collins, who was among those against Cox's measure, says she will introduce a bill to ensure accountability for all states applying for grants. Cox thinks it's a pipe dream that any such bill will rein in the states as long as they are raking in so much money.
No one is more exasperated than Lee Hamilton. Now director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University, Hamilton says Americans must come together and demand their representatives take the pork out of homeland security funding. And he has a blunt message for his former colleagues in Congress: "If you want to set up a general revenue sharing program, do it with other dollars. You're dealing here with the security of the American people."