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Release Date: July 25, 2008
Washington, D.C.
Secretary Chertoff: Welcome. I'm glad you could join us here on a very sunny day to talk about the final allocations for several of our grant programs which are designed to help states and localities enhance their capabilities to prevent, protect against, and respond to acts of terrorism and other hazards and emergencies in their communities.
For fiscal year 2008, we are making available over $3 billion in total grants for preparedness planning and response. This includes our largest grant programs, the Homeland Security Grant Program and Infrastructure Protection grants. A couple of months ago we enacted allocations under the Infrastructure Protection awards which totaled more than $844 million, an increase of $189 million over the fiscal year 2007. And those grants were made to jurisdictions based on competitive applications to protect ports, mass transit buses, and things of that sort.
Today we're announcing $1.69 billion under the Homeland Security Grant Program, which reflects an increase of $32 million over the previous year. It's broken down to include $861 million for the State Homeland Security Program, an increase of $352 million; $781 million for the Urban Area Security Initiative, an increase of $34 million; and almost $40 million for the Metropolitan Medical Response system, and $14.5 million for Citizen Corps. We're also making funds available under some additional grant programs that focus on enhancing capabilities for state, local, nonprofit, and tribal preparedness, as well as law enforcement at the border, through our Operation Stonegarden.
In particular, Operation Stonegarden, which is focused on enforcement for border states, is going to amount to $60 million this year. A similar amount will be distributed in Regional Catastrophic Preparedness grants, which are designed to boost catastrophic incident preparedness. And then there will be $15 million in the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, focused on nonprofit organizations, and $1.6 million in tribal grants.
All in all, if you look at all the grants for 2008, we're talking about more than $3 billion, which is additional to almost $25 billion the department has made available to states over the last 5 years. That's almost $30 billion over five years designed to focus on homeland security.
Let me talk a little bit about some of the changes in this year's process. One of these we've been very focused on is continuity. We want to try to get to the point that our general approach is the same year to year. The communities have asked for this. It allows them to plan on a multi-year basis. And frankly, I think that it reflects a greater confidence in our metrics and in our process and formulas for deciding on how funds are distributed.
But there were some changes this year as opposed to last year, largely driven by some congressional mandates and legal changes over the intervening period of time. As I told you when I released the initial grant guidance in February, 14 new cities were eligible to compete for Urban Area Security Initiative function, raising the total number from 46 to 60. These cities, by the way, represent 90 percent of the collective risk to urban areas in this country, and no cities on the 2007 list dropped off the 2008 list.
Another change was -- and this is actually follows from or actually is the reason for the first change, in part -- is that under the 9/11 Act, several factors such as density of population and a reconfiguration of the boundaries of urban areas to be focused on metropolitan statistical areas, resulted in some changes. Some cities moved up and some down because density and the redefinition of the borders pursuant to Congress's action led to some reordering of where the risk was.
Finally, last year Congress required at least 25 percent of UASI and at least 25 percent of the State Homeland Security grant money be focused on law enforcement activities, which we are doing. And that was done in place of a separate grant program called Law Enforcement Terrorism Protection grants, which was abolished. What this translates to is a $66 million increase from last year's law enforcement grants to a total of over $429 million this year, specifically focused on state and local law enforcement.
Now, we also put some particular programmatic priorities in place as we analyzed the individual applications for funding under these general risk allocations because again, we're focused not only on risk based on geography and population, but we want to look at what the evolving threats are.
In terms of funding priorities, we continued our focus on critical national preparedness capabilities, which of course are consistent with our national preparedness guidelines and the national response framework which we released at the beginning of the year. A particular focus has been improvised explosive device deterrence, prevention, and protection.
And I saw some stuff in the newspaper where someone mentioned, why are you focused on IEDs, improvised explosive devices? Are you saying it's going to become like Iraq here in the United States? To translate it into plain English, an improvised explosive device simply means a homemade bomb. It means a bomb that was not manufactured as part of a military program or some institutionalized way of making bombs, but one that terrorists put together to blow people up.
Almost every single terrorist act in the West since September 11 -- maybe every one; but almost everyone at least -- has involved an IED, an improvised explosive device. Every attempt has involved an improvised explosive device, whether it's the bombings in London, whether, you know, backpack bombs, whether it was the train bombing in Madrid, whether it was the liquid bombs they tried to put on airplanes as part of the 2006 plot. These are all IEDs.
So when we prioritize IEDs as a focus, we are prioritizing what is far and away the greatest threat in the West with respect to terrorist attacks. It does not mean that we're limiting this to the very kind of sophisticated improvised explosive devices and roadside bombs you see in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a much broader category. So hopefully I've dispelled that bit of misinformation.
Now, let me talk a little bit more specifically about the way we have allocated some of these grants to our major population areas. As I said, under State Homeland Security Program we've added $352 million over the last year for a total of $861 million. And under our Urban Area Security Initiatives, we've gone up to $781 million.
As I announced earlier this year, we continued the practice this year, as we had last year, of grouping the cities into two tiers: Tier I, which are the seven highest cities in terms of risk, basis and risk analysis, and then we added additionally 14 cities to get the Tier II, and for a total of 53.
Funding for Tier I cities more or less remained the same this year or went up, with some notable increases in San Francisco, New York, and Houston. For example, in San Francisco, in the Bay Area, in 2007 we were at $34 million. We went up $3 million to $37 [million]. Los Angeles/Long Beach went slightly down in Urban Area grants, from $72 million to $70 million. But if you look at the Infrastructure Protection grants, port and transportation, which we have awarded earlier this year, they actually also net went up quite substantially. The National Capital Region, again, slightly down in Urban Area grants, but up overall if you add in the infrastructure grants.
By the way, again, these decreases reflected some changes in the definition of the boundaries of the other Tier I cities, which affected the risk analysis. Chicago, same thing, down very slightly in Urban Area grants, but up overall if you look at all the grants this year. And that same is true with Jersey City/Newark. Two cities went up substantially. Houston added $12 million to get to $37 million, and New York $10 million to get to $144 million.
If you look at the totality of the grant programs on the graph, what you will see is that essentially every one of the urban areas has gone up this year if you add in all of the grants that we're announcing today and that we announced several months ago. So this is a good news story for each of the Tier I cities, which have made significant strides forward in terms of getting increased funding.
What are the kinds of things we're using this money for? Because it's not just about measuring input in terms of money; it's what is the output we're trying to get? Well, let me give you some of the things that have been accomplished with Urban Area funds that have been previously distributed.
The National Capital Region here in Washington and the surrounding areas has used its UASI funding to create a law enforcement information exchange system that allows more than 70 law enforcement agencies to search regional records with a single query. It has also developed an automated fingerprint ID system that allows for better and faster identification of fingerprints, including by law enforcement officials when they're actually out in the field. And additionally, police officers and firefighters from across the region can now use their radios in subway tunnels due to upgrades made using UASI funds.
The National Capital Region has implemented a water monitoring system to protect the region's drinking water against possible contamination, as well as having inaugurated an emergency alert system that sends text alerts to cell phones, pagers, PDAs, and e-mail accounts, giving residents realtime information about what to do in emergencies, which is critical in effective and safe response.
Additionally, the region purchased equipment and beds to our hospitals to treat a surge of patients resulting from a major emergency. And this year the region is going to use its funds to expand the Metropolitan Medical Response System to Northern Virginia and the rest of the region.
So these monies are actually applied really concretely to give the law enforcement responders, the firefighters, and the emergency health personnel the tools they need to do their job properly if we should have a terrorist attack or a natural disaster.
Moving away from the Washington area, let me highlight just a couple of other things. Operation Stonegarden, $60 million will go to land border states to enhance law enforcement border security. This is part of our full court press to continue to expand and intensify our work to secure the borders, southern and northern, and to bring our state and local partners into that process. These Stonegarden monies cover operational costs associated with border security, including overtime and National Guard deployments, in support of our efforts to keep the borders safe.
Among our Law Enforcement Terrorism Protection-oriented activities, as I said, there's going to be a total increase of $66 million for law enforcement-focused prevention work.
And finally, for the first time, tribes are going to be directly eligible applicants for State Homeland Security Program funding. There's a million six for 12 tribes, and this is for tribes that have not previously received this money through other sources. We look forward as we move forward to increasingly working with the tribes to make sure they are capable of doing what they have to do to protect their residents from not only terrorism but other kinds of hazards.
Finally, we continue to use a peer review process to examine the individual applications and make judgments about what are the best uses for funds. And that we just would be able to say that we have built, both last year and this year, I think, a process that's disciplined, common-sensical, refined, stable, and which responds in an interactive way to the needs and requests of our state and local community partners.
I am hopeful that this process of disciplined risk-based funding, which puts the most money where the most risk is and does it in a way that's transparent and has continuity -- I'm hoping this is a really good harbinger for the future and that we will be able to continue to move forward with what I think is actually probably at this point one of the best designed and most risk-oriented and efficient grant programs across the entire federal government.
With that, we'd be pleased, the Administrator and I, to take any questions. Yes?
Question: I'm just curious. In your mind, how has the degree of risk or the types of risk in U.S. cities changed within the last year?
Secretary Chertoff: Well, I mean, I think that threats, as I've talked about in the past, although there's not an imminent threat that we're aware of that we're focused on right now, the strategic picture, if you look at what's going on in the frontier areas of Pakistan and some other places, certainly continues to cause us grave concern. So the threat portion, I think, is pretty much what it was last year when I announced this, or earlier this year.
We have reduced our vulnerabilities. I mean, almost $30 billion in funds pays off. So we have been able to draw down some of the risk as far as the vulnerabilities are concerned. And the consequences, of course, the cities remain large and the consequences of an attack remain significant.
So I do think we have seen a return on investment that's very significant. In a lot of the cities and states in the country, better tools, better capabilities. But the threat element remains the same, and I think the risk is certainly something that we ought to continue to invest in reducing.
Question: You just mentioned the frontier areas of Pakistan. Can you explain, I know this isn't a simple question, but can you explain why somebody in Queens should care about what's going on in North Waziristan?
Secretary Chertoff: Yeah, I'm happy to do that. Because if someone's sitting in North Waziristan and they're training people, and planning operations, the effect of which are going to be felt in Queens or maybe felt upon an airplane taking off from JFK airport to go to Europe, or maybe felt by American traveling overseas, then that's going to be felt in Queens. So what we've got to focus on is, the entire range and spectrum of how these threats come to be. Where they're planned, where they're trained for, where they're executed, where they're trying to experiment with chemical explosives, all of these can, as we've seen both on 9/11 and since 9/11, can have impact over on the other side of the globe.
Question: Mr. Secretary, these programs were never intended to be permanent. How will your successors know when enough is enough? How long do you see this sort of program continue?
Secretary Chertoff: I agree, they're not permanent and that's one of the reasons we've tried hard to make sure that we fund projects that are capital investments, or are investments in training and capabilities and not investments in simply regular operating expenses.
I think one of the things we're going to look to are what are the quality of the applications coming in for? As we start to see applications coming in for things that look more like ordinary, necessary expenses and less like investment in real terrorism capabilities, we're going to know that we've started to, we need to start to perhaps, shift our priorities, either to other communities or maybe to other kinds of programs.
You know, we have a target capabilities list. We've analyzed what are the things we think communities need to have to be prepared. As communities meet those capabilities, they're going to have, frankly, less to apply for.
One of the things I'm pretty focused on, and I hope my successor will be is, making sure that we don't, the Homeland Security Program doesn't begin to become so broadly defined that it is essentially a general revenue sharing or block grant program. And I've read stories about, from a police community saying, you know, maybe we've spent enough on the homeland security stuff, maybe we've spent enough on the Hazards Response stuff, but we need money for, you know, gang activities, or narcotics investigations. You know, those are worthwhile things. But, it seems to me that if a community doesn't feel a need for homeland security money, they ought to say, look, we think we've achieved what we need to achieve with Homeland Security and maybe that money ought to be directed to other programs or maybe we ought to apply for some other kind of thing. What I don't want to do is define Homeland Security so broadly that it ceases to have the discipline that I think we've imposed on the program as we go forward.
Question: Do you have any sense of how many more years of this will be needed?
Secretary Chertoff: I don't think I can project that. First of all, I can't project what the future is going to show. I can tell you that to the extent we operate an all hazards program, we do, as part of this, communities have to be honest with themselves about whether they have the capabilities they need to defend, if there is a terrorist attack or a catastrophic, natural hazard event. You know, anything that fits within these capabilities. Some communities are better than others. I know some of the large cities, they have made some substantial strides but they still have more left to do. So I can't give you a time line. I do think it's important that we continue to ask this question every year or two.
Mr. Paulison: We're also kicking off this year what Congress asked us to do, a metric system; to go back and look at the grants of thirty million dollars we've put out and see what impact it had and Ross Ashley, sitting on the front row, that runs our grants management program, is in charge of doing that. So that'll kick off this year and we'll help the Secretary make some decisions on what we need to go to Congress with next year for grants.
Question: Is that the first time that you (inaudible) in this fashion?
Mr. Paulison: It is the first time we've really gone back in to detail, what have we bought and what kind of impact have we had to make this country safer. And so that's what the full cost is about. And now is a good time to do that. We've put a lot of money in the system and now we want to see what type of impact we've had and where does, where can we, what our recognition in Congress is going to be to move on with the project.
Moderator: Any remaining questions?
Question: Can I ask the Administrator another question? How do you do that? How many people will go around to how many places over how long a period of time and fill out how many forms?
Mr. Paulison: Maybe I should ask Ross to do that.
Mr. Ashley: The administrator is talking about the cost capability initiative. And what we're doing is going back through the existing data that we have with all of the investment justifications, the state reports that have been put in over the last five years and going through that information to determine what capabilities have been derived through this financial federal assistance, measuring that up against the target capabilities list. Now, some of this will be going back to before we had a target capabilities list. So, the measurements will be an approximation when we go back previous to '06. But what more importantly this is going to do, is put together a rigorous analytical capability that will be used year over year to analyze the impacts that the grants are having.
Question: But this is like an auditing function here in Washington, or do you have people placed on the ground actually, saying, show me your trained dogs.
Mr. Ashley: Both. We have both the preparedness officers out in the regions as well as here in Washington that do interact with our grant recipients on a daily basis on this.
Moderator: We have time for one more question. We can take a lot more time on this particular project in the future.
Secretary Chertoff: I think that's right, that's right. I think what something Ross has said, frankly, it sounds bureaucratic but it actually is very significant and if I compare where we are now to where we were when I came in in 2005, you know, I remember when we came in in 2005 when I had been reading stories previously about money being spent on, you know, dog biscuits and leather jackets or whatever.
The process of building a national response plan and a national response planning board, a target capabilities list, really putting down what we think you have to have in order to be ready and be prepared across the whole spectrum, is exactly the foundation that is now enabling us to go back three years later, two years later, and say, okay, we laid these down as requirements, let's see where they've been met, where the gaps are, we can now measure the actual expenditure against these baseline requirement.
So all of these pieces now create a framework within which it's possible to go forward in the future and say, you know what? These capabilities have been met here. We don't need to do this anymore. And that's really the value of some of this, what sometimes may seem a little opaque, having all these different plans allows you to measure against a real set of metrics as opposed to a lot of vague anecdotal stuff.
Moderator: One final question please.
Question: Flow chart for New York City is, kind of looks like a roller coaster. Going back since 9/11. What New York's getting about $20 million more this year. Is there more of a threat to New York, is their application better filled out? Why is New York getting more money?
Secretary Chertoff: I think at the beginning, and this really goes before we built the system in place, I think what you saw, what you saw was a start, a drop, a peak and then it came back down and since the peak, it's getting a little risen, since I think reflects that since 2006 we've really built a disciplined process and continuity based on some of the lessons that we learned.
There are some differences based upon, as I said, exactly how you bound a city, a metropolitan statistical area, it is a new requirement this year, we didn't have it last year, some of it's based on quality applications, but what it largely is, we finally stabilized and refined a kind of a common system of measurement. By putting together the capabilities list and having, um, stripping out, you know, I think at one point when I came in 2006, there were so many different factors taken into account, and we concluded some of them actually were double counting certain things. So we just simplified it. We simplified it, we refined it, and yeah, we took on board some lessons that some of the prior grant sectors which I think were less than satisfactory. I think now we have a good system now of order.
Moderator: Thank you very much.
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