Shrinking anti-terror funds

Ask yourself whether a terrorist would rather strike in Washington, D.C. or Toledo, OH.
Attack in New York City, NY or Kansas City, KS.
Destroy Los Angeles, CA or Charlotte, NC.
Representative Anthony Weiner, a member of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, reintroduced the Targeting Homeland Security Resources Effectively Against Terrorism (THREAT) Act last week. Originally drafted in 2004, the bill is designed to ensure that more high threat funding flows to New York City and other large cities with real documented threats.
The bill would cap the number of cities eligible for high threat, high-density grants at 15 down from the current 46 areas that include over 600 different cities and towns and cover 54% of the country’s population.
Originally, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) identified seven cities - New York City, Washington, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle - as prime terror targets. It made these seven cities eligible for high-threat, high-density urban area grants. Since then, the DHS has expanded the list to its present 46 areas so that New York City, population 8,000,000, competes for funds with Fort Lauderdale, population 152,000.
Doesn’t seem quite fair does it? All the high risk areas will compete for funds from a pot of anti-terrorist money that is consistently shrinking. There is only $765 million in grants for 2006 down from $885 million in 2005. New York’s share is shrinking too. In 2004 it got $213.8 million and in 2005 that sum shrank to just $169 million.
Besides capping the high-threat, high-density areas at 15, Weiner’s bill would amend the funding formula to weigh critical infrastructure threats more heavily, and ensure that funds are used only to fight terrorist threats instead of for natural disasters or pandemic threats like bird-flu. His bill would also require the funds go directly to the cities and not to the states which have been keeping 20% of the money.
Seems like a no-brainer to us. Spend more to protect Broadway instead of the Jesse James Farm and Museum in Kansas City, KS. Let’s protect Wall Street instead of an obsolete Computer Museum in Toledo, OH. Protect Carnegie Hall instead of the Carolina Raptor Center in Charlotte, NC.
Queens, the city’s most diverse borough, has more population than 16 of the 46 eligible cities that are competing with all of New York City for anti-terror funds. Those numbers do not add up to us.
Rep. Weiner’s THREAT Act ought to be a law - and quickly!