Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mephisto who wrote (6622)	9/18/2003 3:38:26 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

Cities still await funds for homeland security : Mayors say money stuck at state level, endangering citizens Philip Shenon, New York Times Thursday, September 18, 2003 sfgate.com Washington -- Mayors from some of the nation's largest cities declared on Wednesday that the safety of their people was being endangered because cities had not received their share of the billions of dollars in federal counterterrorism aid promised by Washington after the Sept. 11 attacks. Their warnings came as the U.S. Conference of Mayors released a survey showing that 90 percent of cities had not received any part of a $1.5 billion federal fund approved this year to help local emergency workers prepare for a terrorist strike and other disasters. The bipartisan frustration of the mayors, who joined at a news conference in New York to issue the results of the survey, was directed not so much at Washington as at state governments, where, they said, much of an estimated $4 billion in overall counterterrorism aid dispatched by Washington this year has been bottled up. "Nine-one-one does not ring at the statehouse; it rings at City Hall," said Mayor James A. Garner of Hempstead, N.Y., a Republican who is president of the Conference of Mayors. "Cities are the first to respond in a crisis, but last in line for funds. We need direct funds." Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, said that "the American people deserve an answer to the question of why, two years after Sept. 11, 90 percent of America's mayors say they have not seen" the promised federal help for counterterrorism. The survey, conducted last month among 168 cities, including San Francisco, San Jose, Campbell and Fremont, also found that more than half the city governments had not been consulted about, or at least had had no opportunity to influence, decision-making in their state over how federal counterterrorism money would be spent. Tom Cochran, executive director of the Conference of Mayors, said in a statement that mayors believed that "homeland security funding they hoped would flow through a streamlined distribution system designed to meet first- responders' needs is, in reality, being pumped through a much more traditional system in which state decisionmakers tend to view counties, rather than cities, as the focal points of emergency and disaster response." A spokeswoman for the the National Governors Association, Christine M. LaPaille, rejected the suggestion that counterterrorism money intended to help cities was being held up unnecessarily by state governments. And she defended the decision made by Congress and the Bush administration to distribute the federal money through state governments, even though it is cities that may face a special threat of terrorist attack. In Washington, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, Brian Roehrkasse, said the Bush administration was confident that state governments "will adhere to their responsibilities and take necessary steps to distribute the obligated funds to the cities and localities." In another matter relating to the homeland agency, congressional bargainers killed House-passed language to require inspection of cargo shipped on passenger airliners as they agreed Wednesday to a compromise $29.4 billion bill to pay for the Homeland Security Department's operations next year. The agreement put the measure, the first ever for the new agency, on track for House passage next week, with quick Senate approval possible as well. It probably would be the first of 13 annual spending bills for next year to be sent to President Bush, no coincidence considering its widely popular programs.