Norton Says DHS Grant to D.C. and Region Ignores This Area's Vulnerability (7/18/07)

Washington, DC-Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), a member of the Homeland Security Committee, today criticized the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for failing to follow its own rules for awarding anti-terrorism grants by allowing the District and the National Capital Region (NCR) only $61.6 million in the Urban Areas Security Initiative Awards (UASI) program for this year, far less than what the District needs. Although the FY 07 figure is about $15 million more than the NCR received last year ($46 million), this amount is still $20 million less than the 2005 grant ($82 million). Norton said, "The yo-yo funding that has characterized DHS grants since 2003 shows that the Department has no understandable and transparent award standards, and that DHS ignores risk, vulnerability, and consequences. The ups and mostly downs in funding for this region and for New York simply do not reflect 9/11, where the victims were and remain Al-Qaeda's favorite targets," Norton said. DHS officials have said that terror threats go beyond big cities, and that if all the money was sent to urban areas, other communities would fall prey. But Norton responds, "We do not want more than our fair share. Al-Qaeda's M.O. is to bypass ‘Podunk' here and elsewhere in the world in favor of high-impact targets like the nation's capital and the financial centers of the United States. The intelligence, the ‘chatter' we pick up through technology and the actions of terrorists confirm that they want big, even colossal, impacts. The administration's own recent reports say Al-Qaeda has regrouped and grown. This year's grants ignore the government's own intelligence."

Norton strongly objected to the D.C.'s UASI 2006 award of $46 million, a sharp drop from the $82 million granted in 2005. She was instrumental in helping to obtain a committee hearing last year where then Mayor Anthony Williams and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg criticized the awards. As a result, DHS subsequently implemented improved grants favoring these two high risk cities. However, Norton said, "The District and this region can take no comfort in this grant given what we know about what it will take to protect our vulnerability to attack."

Following is a summary of DHS grants to the District and the region showing the unpredictable and perplexing changes annually since 2003.

FY 07 -- $61.6 million

FY 06 -- $46.4 million

FY 05 -- $82 million

FY 04 -- $29 million

FY 03 -- $60.5 million

2007 -- $5.9 million

2006 -- $4 million

2005 -- $9 million

2004 -- $14.5 million

2007 -- $4 million

2006 -- $3 million

2005 -- $3 million

2007 -- $125,107

2006 -- $165,142

2005 -- $116,591