While Washington focuses on what did or didn’t happen before 9/11 are we leaving our cities as open targets?

After reading Jack Newfield’s recent article Bush to City: Drop Dead , I began looking into the security funding for urban areas. Being a resident of Chicago, you might say I have a vested interest in increased urban security and disaster preparedness. But I don’t think anyone in America wants to witness another 9/11 in any city.

Newfield’s article, for the most part, examines the distribution of Federal homeland security funding in New York City. NYC percentage of Homeland Security funds and many other cities have been steadily decreasing over the last three years:

In February Bush proposed an increase to $1.4 billion in homeland security funding for so-called "high-risk cities." But fifty cities are still designated as high risk, so New York's share is only $94 million--a fraction of what is needed. On a per capita basis, New York State ranks forty-ninth among the states in antiterrorist funding, far below rural, sparsely populated Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota. According to the New York Daily News, New York is also forty-ninth in per capita funding among cities: $5.87 per person. Compare that with $35.80 for Pittsburgh. But then, Tom Ridge was governor of Pennsylvania. Or look at Florida, where Jeb Bush is governor. Miami gets $52.82 per person. Orlando gets $47.14--as if Disney World is a bigger terrorist target than the New York subway system, the United Nations, the Stock Exchange, Times Square, JFK Airport, Yankee Stadium on opening day, or our reservoirs and water system. What's the biggest recipient of any US city, at $77.92 per person? New Haven, Connecticut. Is Yale a high-priority target because both Bushes are alumni?

Or consider the Bush Administration's treatment of first responders. It has recently eliminated its only program providing funds for upgrading police and fire department radio communications. On 9/11 the FDNY's radios did not function. Warnings over police radios to evacuate the towers immediately were not received by the firefighters trying to rescue trapped office workers. On that one day, 343 New York City firefighters died, and about 120 of these deaths have been attributed to the futile radio transmissions.

Now this all seems well and good, let’s put all the blame of the inadequate funding on the department of homeland security or Bush, but the Federal funds are largely being distributed by individual states. The US Conference of Mayors created a Homeland Security Monitoring Center to ensure that the “federal plan for the distribution of the funds, which works through the states, must be closely monitored to determine whether it is being followed, whether it is performing adequately, and whether improvements can be made.” Their September 2003 report , sent to all 50 state governments, largely showed that funding was not adequately being directed to cities in need, from the states themselves. The first part of the report looks at the $1.5 billion allocated to First Responders through the Department of Homeland Security:

Survey city officials were asked whether their governments had received
funds from their state under this program, or whether they had been notified that they would receive funds, by August 1.

90 percent reported that they had not received these funds from their states – 37 percent have been notified that funds will be received, but 53 percent had neither received funds nor been notified that they would.

10 percent reported that they had received funds. The cities, as a group, have received or been notified that they will receive a total of $76,715,907.

It then becomes a little less clear as to whether the DHS is not issuing the funds or if the states are simply not passing them along. Luckily for us Chicagoans we know exactly when we can expect to see funds for this program from Illinois – never. That’s right:

Chicago, IL: Chicago has been informed that since it is receiving its own direct funding from the federal government, it will not be receiving any funds from the State from this grant.

Chicago isn’t receiving any of this funding because they fall under the Department of Homeland Security’s Urban Area Security Initiative which allocated $600 million in funding 30 urban areas. Interestingly enough, only 80% of the funding received by the state for this initiative are required to actually make it to the cities themselves, 20% can be kept by the state to complement state assets that provide direct assistance like: “planning, equipment acquisition, training, exercises, management and administration, and operations.”

The report found that more than one third (36%) of the cities eligible for the funding were actually involved in the state planning, and of those that were 38% believed they didn’t have any influence over the funding decisions. Worse than that for Chicagoans, the state is exercising its right to keep 20% of the funding and the 80% received will be distributed to both the county and the city. Worse than that, the state is keeping the two other homeland security allocations it will be receiving.

Chicago, IL: Chicago is not receiving funding from either of the State's two Homeland Security Grant allocations, which total $68 million.

In light of the recent FBI warnings about possible terror strikes on American transit systems, it seems that little money has been allocated to protecting them.

Officials in cities being served by a transit system funded through this program were asked whether they were responsible for providing security or other services to that system.

Well over half of the cities (54 percent) said they have such responsibilities.

Of these, 69 percent said they were not receiving funding through this Mass Transit Security program.

Forty-four percent of the cities reported that their state was exercising its option to keep a portion of the transit security funds to complement state assets at transit sites.

So the real question is not why isn’t the Department of Homeland Security giving adequate funding for urban preparedness, but why aren’t the state governments taking care of their people? With a state population of 12 million people, nearly half, 5.3 million people live in cook county, which doesn’t even accurately include all of the Chicago metro area.

posted by Sarai @ 12:07 AM