WASHINGTON-A bi-partisan group of 23 senators are urging the Senate Budget Committee to reject a Bush administration proposal that would cut state and local first-responder grants by $1 billion.
“The administration’s budget request for fiscal year 2005 would provide the State Homeland Security Grant program with only $700 million, $1 billion less than last year. The budget also proposes to eliminate the baseline level of funding to each state,” reads a letter sent Feb. 27. “Reducing the level of funding for the State Homeland Security Grant program would hurt the ability of our first responders to prevent and respond to a terrorist attack. Eliminating this baseline level of funding will make it virtually impossible for states and localities to conduct emergency planning activities since they will not have any idea of how much funding will be available to them next year.”
These grants represent a stable and predictable funding source for states and localities to protect the homeland, said the senators.
“Every state and local government, regardless of its size, faces increased costs in responding to the heightened level of security. Each and every state must train its first responders,” said the senators.
The Bush administration’s cut in the first-responder grant program has been a target of Democrats.
“Knowing that our first responders’ lives depend on good communications, when Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge appeared before our committee earlier this month, I asked him to explain why those funds were deleted. I was disappointed to hear his view that there is enough grant money out there to handle the job. From my conversations with the local first responders in my district and throughout Los Angeles, I have not found anyone who agrees with that assessment,” said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), a member of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, at a Feb. 25 press conference called to lambaste the Bush budget.
Ridge is scheduled to appear before the House Budget Committee on Wednesday.
In other homeland-security events, the FCC’s Media Security and Reliability Council met for the final time and adopted a set of best practices for the media sector. There had been some thoughts that the MSRC, a federal advisory committee created by the Federal Communications Commission, would mandate that mobile-phone carriers be included in the emergency alert system. While there were broad references to new technologies, there was no specific mandate adopted that will include mobile phones.
