Charlotte Lands More Homeland Security Loot
While the $50 million of federal funding that Charlotte recently nabbed to help pay for security when the Democratic National Convention rolls into town has captured banner headlines, another large sack of security loot that’s landed in the Queen City’s lap has barely registered a blip of publicity.
Maybe that’s because unless you were watching closely, the sizeable chunk of change was easy to lose in the shuffle. The nearly $3.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was accepted and approved with barely a whisper at last month’s city council meeting as part of the consent agenda, which is usually stacked with general expenditures and routine housekeeping items.
But this was no simple governmental broom or dustbin. As part of the 2011 Urban Areas Security Initiative Grant (UASI) Program, Charlotte was among 31 applicants to receive federal funding to aid in the prevention, protection, response and recovery from terrorist attacks. Charlotte will retain the lion’s share of the grant award – $2.13 million – with the remaining $1.1 million going to the N.C. Division of Emergency Management for administration of the grant program, along with paying for the construction of a radio tower to support a radio system for emergency responders (formally known as the NC Voice Interoperability Plan for Emergency Responders, or VIPER).
At the local level, the Charlotte Fire Department will oversee administration of the $2.13 million pocketed by the city.
The Department of Homeland Security requires that 20 percent of the grant funds be used for “law enforcement terrorism prevention activities,” according to CFD Deputy Chief Jeff Dulin.
“These funds will be used by the CMPD for purchasing equipment that will support their Bomb Squad, Special Weapons and Tactics Team, Civil Emergency Unit and Intelligence Unit,” Dulin explained in an email. “The equipment purchased with these funds will not only support terrorism prevention, but also the prevention of other crimes across the city.”
The remaining funds will be used to support the regional focus of the Urban Areas Security Initiative, Dulin wrote, which includes everything from enhanced regional communications and command-and-control capabilities to “Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, Explosive response.”
“This will include the purchase of equipment to support: regional hazardous materials teams, urban search and rescue response, as well as, satellite communications and the regional radio communications system.” Dulin continued. “Training and exercises will be provided for regional disaster medical specialists, who provide medical assistance to victims of mass casualty and structural collapse incidents; as well as National Incident Management System (NIMS) training for public officials, campus police, law enforcement, fire, emergency management, emergency medical service and private sector personnel.”
From 2003 through 2009, the Department of Homeland Security allocated about $5 billion for the UASI grant program, which is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And while the UASI is supposed to foster collaboration and coordination of regional response to security threats in the nation’s highest risk urban areas, its effectiveness has been called into question.
The U.S. General Accountability Office found in 2009 that FEMA “lacks measures to assess how regional collaboration efforts build preparedness capabilities.”
To report on the performance of the UASI program, FEMA has gathered data on UASI regions’ funding for projects and the goals and objectives those projects support, including the National Priority to Expand Regional Collaboration. However, FEMA’s assessments do not provide a means to measure the effect UASI regions’ projects have on building regional preparedness capabilities–the goal of the UASI program. FEMA acknowledged a lack of specific measures that define how or whether national priorities–including expanding regional collaboration–are achieved. In the absence of measures, FEMA directed states to describe their collaborative activities. However, these state activities do not provide a means to assess how regional collaboration activities help build preparedness capabilities.
A report issued this year by the National Urban Area Initiative Association is more favorable, but has drawn its share of skepticism with critics noting that the Association is basically a lobbying group established by UASI grantees to encourage more spending on the UASI program.
“Too frequently, the report asserts that the UASI program is effective without providing any quantifiable outcome measures,” concludes David Muhlhausen, senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis. “For example, the report asserts that the ‘UASI program is enhancing regional collaboration and coordination’ without providing any quantitative evidence to support the conclusion. How much has collaboration and coordination increased in areas receiving funding? Other than stating that there has been an increase, the report does not provide any outcome measures.”
Muhlhausen continues:
The report mentions that 67 percent of urban areas receiving funding use UASI grants for critical infrastructure activities. However, this finding does not mean that the grants were effectively used. Like too many other parts of the report, the amount of federal taxpayer dollars spent is equated with effectiveness. Unfortunately, the amount of money spent does not provide any assessment of how the grants have strengthened the protection of critical infrastructures.
Further, the report asserts that the “value and effectiveness” of the UASI grants “can literally be measured in lives saved” without, ironically, measuring or estimating the number of lives saved as a result of the program. Instead, the report credits the UASI program with the dramatic increase in urban search-and-rescue teams since 2001. While the number of rescue teams has increased, the report does not determine how much of the increase resulted from the grants.
Charlotte was selected to receive a UASI grant this year as part of the DHS’s annual review of the largest 100 metropolitan areas across the country. The amount of funding that a particular UASI region receives is based upon the potential risk of terrorism facing the area. DHS bases its “risk formula” on what officials consider the threat, vulnerability and consequences of an attack on a UASI region, determined by factors such as an area’s “critical infrastructure, concentration of population, economic security, intelligence community assessments, and the relative risk of and faced by a given area,” according to Dulin.
“Charlotte bases its funding on response priorities that support both terrorism and an all hazards focus,” Dulin said. “The goal is to purchase equipment that can be used for large-scale response, be that to an act of terrorism or any other large-scale event.
“This ensures the city is ready to respond to large-scale events and that responders are familiar with the equipment being used, as it does not sit in storage only for use in response to terrorism events,” he said.
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