Mayor: Terror Funding for City 'A Sad Joke'

Mayor: Terror Funding for City 'A Sad Joke'

By RICHARD STEIER

Mayor Bloomberg June 21 took his complaints about the 40 percent reduction in the city's anti-terrorism funding from the Department of Homeland Security to Washington, D.C., telling a congressional committee that DHS's "bias ... penalizes us for our aggressiveness and diligence in protecting our city."

MAYOR BLOOMBERG: 'Program's a pork barrel.' Stepping up his criticism of a national administration controlled by a fellow Republican, the Mayor questioned the "dysfunctional conclusion" that led DHS to cut funding to the city by $83 million compared to last year's allocation of $207.6 million.

Undercut Change

What made this particularly maddening, he told the House Committee on Homeland Security, was that U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff last year changed the funding formula - amid charges that it had been rife with political favoritism - to ensure that 60 percent of the block-grant money provided by the agency would be based on risk.

Mr. Bloomberg noted that New York City, as well as Washington, was on the original list of seven cities that were considered "high threat" because of the likelihood they would be targeted by terrorists. The list has since ballooned to include 46 cities, he noted, lamenting that this made the "risk" funding formula "a sad joke." "We continue to believe that all Homeland Security grants should be based solely on risk," the Mayor told the committee. "But the re-defining of 'risk' to include something for everyone leaves us right back where we started."

PETER T. KING: Harsh words for 'Homeland.'

City Pays 75% of Tab

His administration, the Mayor noted, has been spending an average of $500 million a year in operating and capital costs to cover everything from police overtime for anti-terrorism initiatives to fortifying bridges and upgrading the city's communications network. The cut in Federal anti-terror funding means that the Department of Homeland Security will now be reimbursing the city for less than 25 percent of its costs.

Citing NYPD efforts that led Al Qaeda to cancel a planned attempt to sabotage the Brooklyn Bridge three years ago, Mr. Bloomberg asked how DHS could justify cutting aid to the city because it did not believe it should be covering matters such as police overtime.

"DHS's bias against supporting recurring local costs punishes New York City for the effectiveness of all of our locally funded counter-terrorism and intelligence activities," said the Mayor, noting that those efforts have drawn praise from former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Panel Head: 'Indefensible'

Mr. Bloomberg's pleas drew a sympathetic response from the House committee's Chairman, Long Island Congressman Peter T. King, who called the cut in city funding "indefensible. It raises very, very real questions about the competency of this department in determining how it's going to protect America," Mr. King said.

Homeland Security Undersecretary George Foresman told the hearing that he did not believe that the panels of reviewers who determined how much the grants should be for each city were given classified intelligence about potential threats to New York. He suggested that while Mr. Bloomberg and Washington Mayor Anthony Williams were advocating for their cities, DHS had to operate with a broader perspective to protect the entire nation from attack.

Two days earlier, Congressman King and Mr. Bloomberg both had the chance to speak to President Bush about the funding cut when he visited New York to attend graduation ceremonies for the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point. Neither man pressed the issue as vociferously as at the congressional hearing, with both contending that gentle persuasion might be more effective.

Mr. King said at the hearing that it might be more fruitful to press for extra anti-terror money for the city from other Federal agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Transportation, which have an interest in keeping infrastructure safe from terrorist attacks.

Mr. Bloomberg, in addition to his remarks, presented the Homeland Security Committee with details of 18 planned terrorist attacks - some of which were not executed - in New York City since 1990, including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the destruction of the complex on Sept. 11, 2001.