You win some, you lose someWisconsin DHS security grants cut
Unhappy Badgers contemplate effect of receiving only one-third of $12.8 million in security funding requested from DHS
Emergency response workers and coordinators in the Milwaukee area will have to make do with about a third of the $12.8 million they sought from DHS this year. The agency allocated $4.6 million to five Milwaukee-area counties as part of its Urban Area Security Initiative, officials announced Wednesday. The allocation is $4 million less than the department sent to the area in 2006.
The urban security grant is part of a larger package of anti-terrorism and emergency-response grants that allocate $1.7 billion to the states, including $18 million to Wisconsin. The state had requested roughly $25 million, according to Ryan Sugden, spokesman for the Wisconsin Office of Justice Assistance.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Tim Held reports that in response to the decrease in the federal dollars, law enforcement and public health officials from Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington, and Racine counties plan to regroup and set priorities among their projects, likely focusing on improving communications among the different emergency response agencies. Roughly $3 million worth of items on the $12.8 million wish list targeted communications improvements. The other big-ticket item on the list was gear to protect police and firefighters responding to biological, chemical, radiological, or nuclear explosions.
Local officials were expecting a small cut in the homeland security funding, recognizing that larger areas such as New York, Los Angeles, and Washington appear to be at greater risk for terrorist attacks. Still, the $4 million cut disappointed Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. “Cuts to homeland security funds are cuts to public safety,” Barrett said.
From 2003 to ‘06, Wisconsin received $161.1 million in preparedness grants, including the urban area initiative dollars. Nationally, the 2007 distribution put a priority on improvements that would allow police and fire departments from different jurisdictions to communicate via radio. That appears to be a lingering effect of the terrorist attacks on 9/11, and the communication difficulties that exposed New York firefighters.
