[Infowarrior] - Homeland Security Funding 'Pork' Under Fire

[Richard Forno]

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200702/POL200
70223b.html

Homeland Security Funding 'Pork' Under Fire
By Fred Lucas
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
February 23, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - In 2005, Kentucky won a $36,300 grant from the Department of
Homeland Security to protect bingo halls from terrorist infiltration, and
last year, the federal government granted $46,908 in homeland security funds
to protect a limo and bus service that transports New Yorkers to the
affluent Hamptons region in Long Island.

In 2004, five days before Christmas, the government announced a $153 million
homeland security grant to provide food and shelter for the homeless, and in
the last fiscal year, $15.7 million in homeland security funds went for
enforcement of child labor laws.

While spending government money on questionable projects isn't especially
unusual in Washington, some government watchdogs and other groups say
homeland security money should be off limits for pork barrel spending.

"Money spent on these projects is money not spent on something we need,"
Veronique de Rugy, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute,
told Cybercast News Service. The AEI issued a report last year concerning
wasteful homeland security spending.

In many cases, Congress earmarks spending, while in others, the DHS has
discretion in allocating state and local grants.

"Congress appropriates to us and directs us how to spend the money," DHS
spokeswoman Erin Streeter told Cybercast News Service.

DHS spending priorities are in the spotlight as members of Congress debate
shifting to a "risk-based" funding formula. Advocates say this would reduce
the spending of anti-terror dollars on projects that have little to do with
homeland security.

Under current law, the DHS must give each state 0.75 percent of the overall
pie of grants. This formula allows Wyoming to get about $37.94 per capita,
while California gets about $5 per capita in DHS grants, according to
Citizens Against Government Waste, a group that chronicles federal spending.

The House last month passed a bill that would reduce the minimum required
grant to each state to 0.25 of the entire grant pool. For certain high risk
states - such as New York and California - the minimum would be 0.45
percent.

Meanwhile, the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee
last week passed a proposal for $3.1 billion over the next three years to be
distributed based on a location's vulnerability to a terror attack.

"The 9/11 Commission has told us that we must provide homeland security
grants to states and cities based on risk and not pork-barrel formulas,"
said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson
(D-Miss.) in a statement on the recent House bill. "The bill meets that
recommendation."

Changing the formula is a step in the right direction, David Williams, vice
president for policy at Citizens Against Government Waste, told Cybercast
News Service.

"It looks like this legislation would go a long way in fixing the formula,"
Williams said. "Every state is a potential target, but you have to look at
high density targets."

Still, changing the formula doesn't mean there won't be any waste, fraud and
abuse, Williams said, as long as Congress can still allocate homeland
security money to projects that don't pertain to fighting terror.

Other projects found in the DHS Fiscal Year 2006 budget that appeared to
have little to do with fighting terrorism were:


    * $102,000 for the promotion of public awareness of a child pornography
tip line;

    * $203,000 for Project Alert, a drug use prevention program in schools;

    * $7.9 million in homeland security funds went to investigate missing
and exploited children;

    * $900,000 to the Steamship Authority that runs ferries to Martha's
Vineyard in Massachusetts;

    * $180,000 for a tactical urban combat truck with similar armor to a
military Humvee in LaCrosse, Wis.


Such expenditures are less likely, said de Rugy, if strict risk-based
guidelines are imposed.

"If the minimum grants are reduced, low risk states will get much less," she
said.

In the case of local grants, the Martha Vineyard's ferry and the Hampton
Jitney, Inc. bus line both qualified for grant money based on the large
number of passengers they carry each year, said Streeter.

The Kentucky bingo hall money was granted on the basis of that state's law
enforcement agencies wanting to establish a program to prevent money
laundering through gambling rings with terrorist ties, she said. However,
Kentucky never found a qualified person to conduct the training for the
bingo hall program, so the money will likely be relocated.

The grant for Kentucky's bingo halls is a classic example of how grants are
not allocated based on risk, critics say.

"There was no objective assessment that found a higher risk of terrorist
infiltration in Kentucky's bingo halls than other types of employment,"
argued an article in Wastewatcher, the magazine of Citizens Against
Government Waste.