You win some, you lose someVirginia homeland security funds near $60 million

As the late George Ball, the acerbic under secretary of state in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and an opponent of the Vietnam War, became famous for coining what would be called the Ball Rule of Power: “Nothing propinques like propinquity.”* It means that the more direct access you have to the president, the greater your power, no matter what your title actually is. We may extend Ball’s adage to apply to homeland security contracts in states neighboring Washington, D.C. In evidence: The state of Virginia will receive almost $60 million in homeland security grant funds in the coming year, and that total does not include more than $70 million earmarked for Washington, D.C. and its suburbs in Northern Virginia and Maryland. The grants, announced earlier this week by DHS, represent a major gain for the state after a big dip in funding a year ago. “It’s a turn in the right direction,” said Robert Crouch Jr., assistant for commonwealth preparedness to Governor Timothy Kaine.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Michael Martz writes that the grants do not reserve a specific amount for the Richmond region, other than a $250,000 award for medical response in an emergency involving mass casualties. Instead, the region will hope for a share of about $25 million in homeland security projects to pay for initiatives around Virginia. Crouch said, however, that the region could receive a significant share of aid to develop emergency shelters in, for example, “a mass evacuation from Hampton Roads or Northern Virginia, where we may want to use sites in the Richmond area.”

The Richmond region also will look to share in a one-time grant of $25 million by the Commerce Department to improve emergency communication systems for police, fire, and rescue workers in jurisdictions that do not use the same equipment or radio frequencies. Virginia is a leader nationally in coordinating these so-called interoperability initiatives on a statewide and regional basis. “We’ve never had so much at one time,” said an elated Chris Essid, interoperability coordinator in the Office of Commonwealth Preparedness. One of the biggest winners in Virginia is Hampton Roads, which was awarded $8 million in its first year of eligibility as one of 45 high-risk urban areas. The money will be used to benefit 16 localities in the region, with investments proposed for port security, emergency communications, bomb suits and other security priorities. “The revenue will be welcome,” said