Interoperability plans garner additional $400M

The growing pool of federal dollars for interoperable public safety communications grants could get even bigger, even though the nearly $3 billion spent to date has largely failed to improve first responder communications around the country.
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, an independent Democrat from Connecticut, and ranking member Susan Collins (R-Maine) added $400 million for interoperable public safety communications to a non-binding budget measure. The Senate passed budget resolution for fiscal 2008 provides a blueprint for follow-up spending bills.
“We know our first responders don’t have the training, equipment, and frequently the manpower they need to do their jobs properly,” Lieberman said. “Unfortunately, time and again, disasters occur, and police, fire fighters, and emergency medical workers are unable to exchange information with each other. Lives are lost as a result. This funding represents a sustained federal commitment to supporting these essential programs that bolster our preparedness. I am pleased that my colleagues agree that more, not less, must be done to strengthen an ‘all-hazards’ approach to preparing for and responding to terrorist attacks as well as natural disasters.”
The budget resolution restores Bush administration cuts to key homeland security programs to 2007 levels and provides an additional $1.4 billion above the president’s request of $46.4 billion for the Department of Homeland Security.
“Even the most effective pre-incident planning will prove ineffective if first responders are unable to communicate with each other in real time, on demand, during an actual incident,” stated Collins. “Our amendment addresses both of these needs by increasing funding for two vitally important first responder grant programs: emergency communications and the emergency management performance grant.”
In addition to the $400 million earmarked for first responder communications and the $2.9 billion already spent on public safety interoperability grants by the DHS, the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration is responsible for a $1 billion grant program to enable wireless communications among firefighters, police, medics and others during emergencies.
In a letter to Michael Bopp, associate director for general government programs at the Commerce Department, key lawmakers warned the NTIA not to surrender control of the grant program to the DHS. The NTIA has contracted with the DHS, which has a large-scale grant-making apparatus in place, to manage the $1 billion public safety interoperability grant program.
“It is important to recognize . that consultations and attention to administrative efficiencies do not serve as legislative limitations on what NTIA may do in designing and implementing this program. Had Congress so intended, it could have simply designated the funds to DHS to use in existing grant programs. Congress expressly chose not to do [so],” stated House Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the telecom subcommittee.
NTIA chief John Kneuer has told Congress his agency has final say on policy decisions regarding the grant program.
Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations, wants to make the NTIA interoperability grant program permanent and fund it with spectrum auction proceeds.