WASHINGTON — Los Angeles and other high-profile urban areas could get more federal aid as a result of changes in the way the Department of Homeland Security allocates funds to train and equip police officers, firefighters and other emergency responders for possible terrorist attacks.
The plan, announced Tuesday by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, will shift more funds to high-risk areas and away from areas where attacks are considered less likely.
At the same time, other changes, along with an overall drop in federal aid levels, are stirring concern among some Los Angeles-area officials about the long-term effect of the new approach to distributing funds.
The plan is the latest round in a running battle between the Bush administration and Congress. The administration favors allocating anti-terrorism grants based on risk, thus favoring major urban centers on the East and West coasts. Congress has insisted on sharing aid more broadly, including funds for such towns as North Pole, Alaska, where the threat of attack is considered minimal.The debate was complicated by the nation's experience with Hurricane Katrina, which served as a reminder that terrorism is not the only threat facing emergency responders and that natural disasters could affect areas that have little to fear from terrorists.
The new approach, which applies only to Urban Areas Security Initiative grants, creates new regional groupings for the distribution of funds, including three in California. Another federal grant program remains unchanged; it allots each state a guaranteed minimum, according to a formula devised by Congress, and then distributes the rest on a risk basis.
"This is a step in the right direction," said Jack Weiss, a Los Angeles City Council member whose district encompasses Los Angeles International Airport. "At the same time, I'm always concerned when Washington wants us to create new bureaucracies to cope with the paperwork."
Many of the changes reflect an effort to make dwindling funds go further; grant money for the Urban Areas Security Initiative has dropped from $855 million last year to $765 million for 2006.
Though the program has always been risk-based, the department said, it is putting a greater emphasis on risk by limiting the number of eligible areas.
Previously spread among 50 cities, grant eligibility will now be limited to 35 regions that Chertoff identified as the "communities facing the greatest risk and demonstrating the greatest need in order to receive the highest return in our nation's security."
