State, Seattle getting less money from feds for homeland security

Washington state and the Seattle area will receive less federal homeland-security funding this year than last, a decrease that mirrors a nationwide drop in counterterrorism spending.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced $1.7 billion in grants to states and urban areas Wednesday, including $32.2 million for Washington state overall and $9.2 million specifically for the Seattle area, which includes King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. In recent years a portion of the state grants also has gone to the Seattle area.

The state total amounts to a 23 percent reduction from last year, while the Seattle area decrease is 22 percent. Nationally, homeland-security grants were down by about the same percentage.

"We are sad we don't have the money to meet every need. However, there are many states that have less. We fared very similarly in the proportion of federal funding we received," said Arel Solie, homeland-security manager for the state's Emergency Management Division.

Security money is decreasing because Congress' will to fund emergency preparedness is fading after the Sept. 11 attacks, said Eric Holdeman, director of emergency management for King County. Federal spending is also hampered by huge increases in spending for the Iraq war, Holdeman said.

The Seattle area should have received more because it is near the Canadian border and has a port, ferry system, high name-recognition and danger of earthquakes, he said. "I actually thought we would rank higher."

Local and state officials will start meeting today to decide how to spend the federal money.

"We asked for considerably more, over $60 million," said Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske. "We'll have to make some hard decisions."

Since the federal government first doled out the grants to urban areas in 2002, the Seattle metropolitan area has been awarded $66.8 million, with the state's largest city getting slightly more than half of the money to date.

Kerlikowske and city budget officials said the money has gone mainly for training, exercises and equipment, such as protective gear for every law-enforcement officer in King County.

Because Seattle has used federal money for equipment and training, it will not have to lay off any employees, said Marty McOmber, spokesman for Mayor Greg Nickels.

Still, Nickels is disappointed about Seattle's reduced funding, McOmber said. "We feel the money is going in the wrong direction, that the money isn't following the threat level," McOmber said, noting that New York City and Washington, D.C., will each receive 40 percent less this year.

Instead, the Department of Homeland Security will provide more money to mid-sized cities from Jacksonville, Fla., to Sacramento, Calif.

The announcement of such large cuts in funding for two cities attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, prompted outrage from lawmakers and local officials in both areas, who questioned the wisdom of cutting funds so deeply for cities widely recognized as prime terrorist targets.

In Washington, D.C., where the funding was cut to $46 million from $77 million, Mayor Anthony Williams called the decision "shortsighted."

New York's grant plummeted to $124 million from $207 million. A Department of Homeland Security risk scorecard for the city claimed that the home of the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge had "zero" national monuments or icons.

"As far as I'm concerned the Department of Homeland Security and the administration have declared war on New York," Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told The Associated Press. "It's a knife in the back to New York, and I'm going to do everything I can to make them very sorry they made this decision."

Homeland Security's troubled grant programs have drawn criticism from cities both large and small, many of which have felt slighted by what they claimed was a haphazard and unfair distribution plan. This year's round of grants was supposed to avoid those problems by employing risk scores, effectiveness tests and 17 "peer review" panels consisting of homeland-security professionals from 47 states to ensure that enough money went to areas at highest risk.

"We have to understand that there is risk throughout the nation," said Tracy Henke, assistant secretary for grants and training. "... We worked very hard to make sure that there was fairness in the process."

Compiled from reports by Seattle Times staff writers Bob Young and Ashley Bach and The Washington Post. News researcher Gene Balk contributed to this report.