From The Press Room

• DHS Announces $1.7 Billion in Homeland Security Grants

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Transcript of Press Conference with Secretary Chertoff to Announce $1.7 Billion in Homeland Security Grants

Release Date: July 18, 2007

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010
Washington, D.C.

Secretary Chertoff: All right. Good afternoon everybody. As you remember, this last January we released the grant guidance and initial allocations for our fiscal year 2007 Homeland Security Grant Program. As you know, this is one of a number of programs that we're funding as part of our effort to secure our homeland.

This morning Secretary Gutierrez of the Department of Commerce and I announced nearly 1 billion, with a b, dollars in public safety interoperable communications grants which will be awarded to states and cities this year to promote communications interoperability.

Through the Homeland Security Grant Program we are now making available about 1.7 billion dollars to states and urban areas to support counterterrorism planning, training, equipment and exercises. Now, today we are going to announce the final allocations for the competitive portions of these grants. So the sum total here is over 2.5 billion dollars.

The Homeland Security Grant Program is divided into five major areas: The Urban Areas Security Initiative, $746 million; State Homeland Security Program, $509 million; Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program, $363 million; Metropolitan Medical Response System, $32 million; and the Citizen Corps, $14.5 million.

Let me talk a little bit about the process. Last year I said that in the wake of the experience we had had with the 2006 awards, we needed to simplify the process and remove elements of the analysis that while small in impact had a tendency to muddy the waters a little bit.

This year the analysis we pursued is a very straightforward logical one that I think is going to be easily understandable to the American public. We are focused on, as always, threat, vulnerability and consequence. And the way we have weighted these factors in judging the application of the grant guidelines to cities and states is by putting about 40 percent of our weight on population because population and consequence to population is, of course, our first priority. Twenty percent on threat and we realize that threat is always changing and, therefore, putting too much on threat runs the risk of putting all your priorities in fighting last year's battles and not enough on anticipating next year's battles. Twenty percent on gross metropolitan product or economic data for the cities. That's what we call the economic index and it is based upon conventional economic data that are available from a variety of government sources.

We have put 15 percent in critical infrastructure. Here I want to emphasize this is not petting zoos, popcorn factories or ice cream parlors. What this is, is about 2000 of the most important infrastructure in this entire country. Major power plants. Major switching stations. Dams. Bridges. The kinds of things that if they go out are going to have regional if not national impact.

And finally 5 percent in what we call the national security index. This puts a little bit of an extra bit of weight on those areas where we have a lot of military bases or international borders where we do recognize there is an inherently greater risk and frankly was part of the back-and-forth we have had over the last couple of years with a lot of local officials from communities that are near the border or do have major military bases in their environment.

Let me also say something about measuring year to year. It is inevitable and I am certainly going to wind up catering to it that we are going to lay out the comparison of this year as opposed to last year or the prior year. But I do want to remind people that these grants are meant to be investments in capital. They are meant to build capabilities. They are not meant to be annuities or entitlements where you get the same amount every year like a Social Security check.

Look at it in this way. If you came to me and you said I need to have some money to build a fence around my house and to put in an alarm system and I thought that was a worthwhile thing to do and I gave you the money and you built it in one year or you built it in two years, I wouldn't expect you to come back to me after you built it and said, "Now, I want the money all over again." Because you build it once, you have it built.

And so without suggesting that there's no place for sustainment, we should expect to see some variation over time. In fact, as communities begin to build their capabilities, we should see them getting less money so we can spread it out a little bit more widely among those who haven't had an opportunity at all.

And as a consequence of that I want to say that as you go year to year and you look at next year as well, states and urban areas should not necessarily assume they are going to get the same amount next year. Some of it is going to depend on the total amount of the pie. Some of it is going to depend on whether the projects have already been built. Some of it is going to depend on the cumulative amount of money that's been put in there.

I think I would urge everybody who is evaluating the grant to look at the total amounts of money that have been given to these communities. We have given 23 billion dollars in Homeland Security grants out since September 11th. And that is a huge amount of money.

Our goal, of course, is always to take a balanced approach, to focus on risk, put most of the money where most of the risk is but also not neglect to recognize that risk is actually distributed somewhat more widely than in four or five cities or four or five states.

Now let me get to the issue of state grants. There is a packet that is going to lay out every individual state. I will give you the five states that got the most money and these will not be a surprise to you.

You will see that if you look to my left that California received in state grants alone 95.7 million this year of which 55.8 million was in State Homeland Security Program grants and a little under 40 million in Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program grants.

New York came in second with 66.5 million. Texas had 58.9 million, Florida 43.6 million, and Illinois 38.2 million.

I want to remind you that this is the one program which Congress has mandated we have 40 percent of the money distributed on a flat formula evenly among all states. And as the Administration has persistently said, certainly since I've been here, we think that is actually not the best way to do it. We would like to see those minimums lowered. That would, of course, obviously push more money into the risk factor. But even with that 40 percent minimum, we have pushed money in the higher risk states. That is what you see in the allocation this year.

Now let's turn to the cities. If you turn to the right, you will see the way we allocated to cities. These sort of follow logically from what we said earlier this year. We've put 55 percent of the money in what we call the tier 1, the seven tier 1 urban areas and the balance in what I call tier 2 urban areas which number 39.

I would like to emphasize that we actually, although they are politically divided, treat New York City and Jersey City, Newark, Northern New Jersey as really being part of a single urban area.

And the reason I say that is because if you have ever been there, a classic example I like to use is when you get on the George Washington Bridge to go from New Jersey into New York, part of the bridge is in New Jersey, part of it is in New York. If you put all the money to protect the bridge in New York and someone blows up the New Jersey side, the whole bridge is coming down. So you have got to put assets on both sides of the border.

When you look at this what you will see is that about 18 percent of the money was allocated this year to New York, 134 million which is up about 10 million over last year. Another 8 percent was allocated to Northern New Jersey. So if you add those together you see over a quarter of the money goes to the New York and Northern New Jersey metropolitan area.

The other numbers speak for themselves. Los Angeles, Long Beach $72.5 million are down slightly from last year. About equal to 2005. National Capital Region $61.6 up about $15 million or 32 percent. Chicago $47.2 million. Bay Area $34.1 million also going up and Houston $25 million.

Consistent with what I have said, let's look at the allocations over the past several years. You're going to see that they actually are remarkably consistent. If you go back to 2003, we have done about 53 percent of the tier 1 jurisdictions and the balance of the tier 2 jurisdictions. Almost $1.9 billion to the top seven urban areas.

New York alone has gotten 19 percent of the money, $669 million. If you add Jersey City, Newark, Northern New Jersey, that is another $133 million which totals up about over $800 million and would account for approximately again close to a quarter of the total amount of money.

Again, LA Long Beach $300 million, National Capital Region $279 million. Chicago $222 million. Bay Area $169 million and Houston $113 million. So those allocations I think again reflect a substantial degree of risk in some areas. This is another way to look at the same issue if you look at 2007.

You can see that we have put an amount of money in the Tier 1 cities particularly in New York that is many, many times what these other cities get. I mean for cities like Buffalo, for example, which got $5 million, you know, we're talking about it being basically 30 times as much money as New York City. And you can do the math yourself. But we really are putting most of the money in the area that most of the risk is.

I do think this is – we have come to the point now where there is kind of a philosophical issue. You know we are past the point of arguing about whether our methodology or calculations are right. I think most people I've talked to understand that given what our philosophy is here that we are calculating these things correctly.

There is a difference in philosophy however. Some people take the position money ought to be spread out evenly across a lot of jurisdictions. We do not take that position. We think most of the money should go where most of the risk is. But we also recognize that some people and I talked to some of them today believe that almost all the money ought to go to the top tier cities.

And I have to tell you if we were going to do that, if we were going to put a substantial amount of – a substantially larger amount of UASI money in the top tier cities what would be left over would be so small that we would basically have zero out the tier 2 cities.

Now, I happen to think that is not the right answer. I think if you look at consequence, infrastructure, population and frankly if you look at threat, it is not restricted simply to seven cities.

I just suggest to you if you look back over the last couple of years what's emerged, we've had charges of a plot, for example, to blow up Fort Dix, New Jersey recently. For those of you who know Fort Dix, that's outside of Trenton.  It is nearer to Philadelphia than it is New York.

We had charges arising out of a plot in Miami where there were allegations that the attempt was to blow up federal buildings in Miami and the Sears Tower in Chicago. Of course the millennium bomber and the library tower plots were focused on LA but you will recall there was a bomb set up in the Atlanta Olympics some years back which was done by a radical anti-abortionist.

Of course the second worst day of terrorism in this country's history was Oklahoma City. And even if you look at the attacks in Britain recently, you saw attacks in London, but you also saw attacks in Glasgow, a city which in terms of population is somewhere in the middle of Tier 2.

My point is that for those who disagree with our philosophy that most but not all the money ought to go into the top urban areas, for those who think it all ought to go there or it all ought to be spread out, we ought to have the debate. This is not any longer about, you know, mathematical calculations. It is about making a judgment about where the risk is and how we ought to allocate the money.  And, of course, if Congress should decide they want to put it all in six cities and tell the other cities you're getting nothing, Congress is free to do that and obviously we will follow the law.

Let me focus on a couple of particular locations that will be of interest to those of you in the room who probably live in the National Capital Region or some of you who live in New York.

New York actually is going to do very well this year compared to prior years. There was a leaked number on the UASI grants of $134 million which is a $10 million increase over the last year but still less than fiscal year 2005.  

I have two observations about that. First of all in 2005 it was $100 million more appropriated for this program than was appropriated this year. So that is one explanation for the difference. The other thing I observed is that as with many weeks, it was incomplete. With the money that we have allocated for the communications grant program that we announced this morning, the total amount of money that will be distributed to New York this year under the existing programs to date will be $257 million which is very, very close to about 98.3 percent of the amount that was received in the biggest year, 2005, which was 261 million and about 50 percent more than was last year's 203 million.

I also want to remind you there are $220 million in additional transit and port grants, part of a supplemental that we will be distributing in the next couple of weeks. I am comfortable projecting that is going to take the number substantially higher so that this will be New York's biggest year ever in terms of getting grants.

National Capital Region, you are going to see much of the same picture over here. If you New York City and Northern New Jersey urban area it is even more dramatic. I will not run through the numbers in detail but you can see that adding all the numbers up this year, that entire urban area will get $310 million which is a significant increase over both 2005 and a very significant increase over 2006.

Finally, let's turn to the National Capital Region where again here we went up in the base UASI funding, but there is also about $12 million in the communications funds. That is going to bring the total up to about 91.7 million which is well above last year by about 50 percent and very close to what we had in 2005. Again, there will be more money in the supplemental.

So the bottom line is I think this is a program of allocating grants that reflects common sense, analysis of risk, very good work this year with everybody who was an applicant. We did two rounds rather than one so everybody had an opportunity to get some feedback and to fine tune your applications and I feel confident that nobody really left any money on the table. They maximized what they could get.

I think that what we have settled on is basically the form of it we will have going forward in terms of most of the money in the top tier but also a significant amount of money in the second tier in cities like Las Vegas and San Diego.

At the end of the day if the public believes that philosophically we ought to take a different position, we ought to have that debate. There are pluses and minuses. There are trade-offs. We think we have struck the balance right, tipped in the right way. And if those in Congress disagree then, of course, Congress is free to take the action it wants to take.

And now I'll take some questions.

Question: You almost seem to be begging for somebody to step in and say, "Give me more direction if you want to," rather than using a battering ram every year.

Secretary Chertoff: No. I will say this. I am trying to – I think I am looking at this as an opportunity for, you know, frank talk with the American public. That these decisions that we are making here, you know, it is easy to, last year to kind of pick on petting zoos and try to make it into a question of a mistake. This allocation here, it was well considered. It reflects a lot of input.

The disagreements now are not going to be about some math error or something that you can simply poke a little bit of fun at. It is about a hard choice that we all face. My job is about hard choices. I am always choosing among appealing alternatives but there is – there is always a choice that has to be made because you cannot satisfy everybody.

So I am saying we have come to a considered judgment about what we think the right philosophical balance is. If those who criticize have a better way, they should come forward and propose that better way and see if they carry the day in the debate.

And I think that is what, you know, in a whole range of issues whether it be the immigration debate we talked about some months ago or a grant funding or other security measures, I see my job more and more in part as framing the issue as clearly as I can, laying out the consequences of the choices, making a recommendation, taking a position which I think the public deserves but also saying for those who disagree, come in and make another proposal. Give us a different solution. And if you carry the day, that is the way the system works.

Question: Mr. Secretary, how are the cities and localities doing in terms of spending the money that they have already been given. How do you go about tracking that?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, we do track it. There was a story in the newspapers recently that indicated I think less than half of the money has been actually spent and as much as a third may be still unobligated meaning it has not been assigned to a particular contract.

Now I want to be clear. I'm not criticizing states and cities for that.

Question: Are those numbers accurate?

Secretary Chertoff: I think they are essentially accurate. They are going to vary a little bit jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

I am not criticizing states and cities for that. Once you get the money you still have to solicit proposals, figure out what contractor you want to take bids from, award the bids and then get the products in and test them before you pay the full amount of money.

Anybody who has ever built a house knows only a fool pays the contractor at the beginning of the job as opposed to at the end of the job. So in many ways this reflects prudent management. But what it also tells us is there is a huge amount of money in the pipeline. And the fruits of that money are going to be rolled out over the next couple of years so the public is going to see a lot of benefit from the money that has already been given, the $23 billion. It hasn't emerged yet.

And so when people run to continue to shove more and more into the pipeline they should consider the pipeline is already quite full. While I am not suggesting that we, you know, wash our hands and say we're done, I do think that people should recognize the outputs are very much in process and they should not simply measure success by inputs.

Pete?

Question: Since these pie charts are up, let me ask you, you've been talking here about how you sliced the pie. What about the question of whether the pie itself is big enough? The National Governors Association sent you a letter today, for example, saying that the Administration's budget requests for State Homeland Security Grants have in their words decreased precipitously since their inception.

Is the total amount right do you think?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, I think that particularly if you look at the communications grants this year, I think we are basically at the level we were last year. And again let me go back to the principle. This is capability building. It is not necessarily a sustainment or an annuity or an entitlement program.

So as capabilities increase, there is going to be presumably less of a need. And as Peter just pointed out we have got a considerable amount of money still in the pipeline with the fruits to come out.

Now, look. You know, there is always an argument people want more money. Like everybody else in the world, I live with a budget. And the question is what is the trade-off? Do we want to do less at the border? I don't think so. I think the public wants to see more done at the border.

We do an awful lot in contributing to cities. For example, we spend billions in the Coast Guard and the Coast Guard provides protection for a lot of the ports.

We provide protection for the air ports through TSA. We provide information through our intelligence and analysis sections. So I think in a lot of ways we are providing benefits to states and cities.

At some point when you get to the issue of grants, of course, there is almost a limitless appetite for grants in a wide variety of areas. To be honest, Pete, I think and I've had public testimony about this with the House appropriators to some degree some of the governors are really beginning to look to us to give them money that might have come under the old TOPS program or under some other kind of program. But that is not what this money is for. Congress says it is for homeland security.

I think we are going to try to be disciplined. We are going to try to make the pie go as far as we can, but in the end the pie is only as big as it is.

Question: You got a lot of grief last year in the landmark counting particularly when it came to New York for the paperwork that was submitted with it that said New York only had two landmarks. Obviously there was a reason for that counting forms. Do those forms exist this year? Are you even factoring that in?

Secretary Chertoff: We do not care about landmarks. We do not care about icons. We do not care about apartment buildings. These things were always marginal factors. And when we stood back and we looked at it in a common sense way, it seemed to us population including population density, economic index, really critical infrastructure, those were the fundamental elements of consequence that really mattered.

And fiddling around at the margins with things like number of monuments and number of apartment buildings added very little value and a lot of heartburn.

Question: They've changed the risk formula to decrease the minimum for everybody and increase the risk base. It is having more trouble getting through the Senate. Does the Administration support that change and what is your feeling about it actually passing and getting into law.

Secretary Chertoff: Well I can't predict where things are. I know they are going to set up a conference. We have in general been in favor of reducing minimums, state minimums. Congress is going to have to figure out exactly where it draws the line, whether they want to completely eliminate it or eliminate it somewhat. I think again, it is an important – it's a philosophical issue.

And part of what I am doing, to come back to what I said earlier, is I'm inviting on what I consider to be issues of principle or issues of philosophy. I am inviting Congress to step up and get involved in the debate.

I am willing, the Administration is willing to take a position and argue for it. Members of Congress should take positions. And in the end they have to decide. They have to write the law and we apply it faithfully.

Pam?

Question: Were there particular types of projects that you looked upon with more favor this year in granting the funding, you know, say fusion centers or what were the things that you gave highest priority to this year?

Secretary Chertoff: We laid out a whole set of national capabilities that any one of which qualified. We were not looking to impose, you know, if you hit the capabilities and you could show that there was a real value that satisfied us. We did not try to write a one size fits all script.

I have said publicly I happen to think cameras are a really good investment. Fusion centers are a good investment. But we, you know, we recognize different communities have different capabilities.

Question: Some of the specific cities on the urban area security funding, there are a couple of areas that pop-up for the first time: Norfolk, El Paso, Fort Lauderdale. Tucson. Is this examples that you were talking about it is their turn to build the fence? How do they go from zero to sixty?

Secretary Chertoff: It is actually – well, they don't go – they don't go to sixty. They probably go to like 4 or 5. But actually it reflects the national security index. Norfolk is a major military base and a major port.

Question: It always has been.

Secretary Chertoff: It has been, right. So this is an example of how we now have actually canvassed with a lot of local and state officials and hearing again and again proximity to border, military bases, does create an extra risk because it is an attractive target or an easier way to get in, that made sense.

You know we actually amazingly listened to the client, the customer. And we were persuaded and so as it happens the communities you've picked either are in a border area, or Norfolk is a major military installation as well as a major seaport. And they for the first time made it on the list.

Again, the order of magnitude being very much less than some of the other communities.

Question: Well, this is an example of the 5 percent national security index.

Secretary Chertoff: Right. National Security Index. That may put you over, over the edge.

Question: One final question, please.

Secretary Chertoff: Yes.

Question: Back to Pete's question. Looking at some of the cities that are considered to be what you all consider a greater risk this year. Is that because of the new formula? Or is there actually more intelligence pointing to a threat to Houston and Phoenix?

Secretary Chertoff: No, it's not. Let me talk about threat for a minute. When we look at threat we look at threat in a – over a long span of time. It is not like a particular threat comes across and we go, oh, boy, we've got to review the formula now and put more in this city rather than that city.

One of the reasons we have treated threat at 20 percent is because it does tend over time to move around a lot. And it is also not necessarily – past threats are not necessarily a good predictor of future threats.

Also when you look at threat, remember the threat may be born in one place and executed in another. Let me give you an example.

Eyman Farris who admitted to being involved in a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge was in Columbus, Ohio. So the threat is born in Columbus and that may be where the planning takes place but the target is in New York or you had a case I mentioned earlier where there was planning in Miami but they discussed an attack in Chicago.

So when you look at threat you not only look at the target of the threat, you look at where the threat is born. The example in Britain over the last month being perhaps the best example of that.

So we try to look at it over a long period of time. I think we all agree that there are some places that are a generically higher threat but I think you would be surprised at the number of comparatively small places where we have people that we are seriously looking at as potential operatives and they are not in cities you would think you would find them. And we cannot necessarily know whether they would be operational in a big city or whether they would be operational locally. So, it is a reflection of the fact that threat tends to be a very adjustable factor based on what we discover over a period of time.

Thank you very much.

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