Homeland Security Funding 'Pork' Under Fire
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200702/POL200 70223b.html (CNSNews.com) - In 2005, Kentucky won a $36,300 grant from the Department of Homeland Security to protect bingo halls from terrorist infiltration, and last year, the federal government granted $46,908 in homeland security funds to protect a limo and bus service that transports New Yorkers to the affluent Hamptons region in Long Island. In 2004, five days before Christmas, the government announced a $153 million homeland security grant to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and in the last fiscal year, $15.7 million in homeland security funds went for enforcement of child labor laws. While spending government money on questionable projects isn't especially unusual in Washington, some government watchdogs and other groups say homeland security money should be off limits for pork barrel spending. "Money spent on these projects is money not spent on something we need," Veronique de Rugy, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told Cybercast News Service. The AEI issued a report last year concerning wasteful homeland security spending. In many cases, Congress earmarks spending, while in others, the DHS has discretion in allocating state and local grants. "Congress appropriates to us and directs us how to spend the money," DHS spokeswoman Erin Streeter told Cybercast News Service. DHS spending priorities are in the spotlight as members of Congress debate shifting to a "risk-based" funding formula. Advocates say this would reduce the spending of anti-terror dollars on projects that have little to do with homeland security. Under current law, the DHS must give each state 0.75 percent of the overall pie of grants. This formula allows Wyoming to get about $37.94 per capita, while California gets about $5 per capita in DHS grants, according to Citizens Against Government Waste, a group that chronicles federal spending. The House last month passed a bill that would reduce the minimum required grant to each state to 0.25 of the entire grant pool. For certain high risk states - such as New York and California - the minimum would be 0.45 percent. Meanwhile, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee last week passed a proposal for $3.1 billion over the next three years to be distributed based on a location's vulnerability to a terror attack. "The 9/11 Commission has told us that we must provide homeland security grants to states and cities based on risk and not pork-barrel formulas," said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) in a statement on the recent House bill. "The bill meets that recommendation." Changing the formula is a step in the right direction, David Williams, vice president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste, told Cybercast News Service. "It looks like this legislation would go a long way in fixing the formula," Williams said. "Every state is a potential target, but you have to look at high density targets." Still, changing the formula doesn't mean there won't be any waste, fraud and abuse, Williams said, as long as Congress can still allocate homeland security money to projects that don't pertain to fighting terror. Other projects found in the DHS Fiscal Year 2006 budget that appeared to have little to do with fighting terrorism were: * $102,000 for the promotion of public awareness of a child pornography tip line; * $203,000 for Project Alert, a drug use prevention program in schools; * $7.9 million in homeland security funds went to investigate missing and exploited children; * $900,000 to the Steamship Authority that runs ferries to Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts; * $180,000 for a tactical urban combat truck with similar armor to a military Humvee in LaCrosse, Wis. Such expenditures are less likely, said de Rugy, if strict risk-based guidelines are imposed. "If the minimum grants are reduced, low risk states will get much less," she said. In the case of local grants, the Martha Vineyard's ferry and the Hampton Jitney, Inc. bus line both qualified for grant money based on the large number of passengers they carry each year, said Streeter. The Kentucky bingo hall money was granted on the basis of that state's law enforcement agencies wanting to establish a program to prevent money laundering through gambling rings with terrorist ties, she said. However, Kentucky never found a qualified person to conduct the training for the bingo hall program, so the money will likely be relocated. The grant for Kentucky's bingo halls is a classic example of how grants are not allocated based on risk, critics say. "There was no objective assessment that found a higher risk of terrorist infiltration in Kentucky's bingo halls than other types of employment," argued an article in Wastewatcher, the magazine of Citizens Against Government Waste. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> See what's inside the new Yahoo! 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