UASI Grants More Widely Distributed

On July 25 the Department of Homeland Security announced $1.8 billion in federal Homeland Security grants. This included $781.6 million for the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) program.

Sixty urban areas have been selected to participate in the UASI program. This is up from 46 cities last year and is the largest number of jurisdictions to participate in the program.

There are seven so-called Tier I UASI recipients:

• New York: $144,189,000 in FY2008 UASI grants
• Newark/Jersey City: $34,988,000
• Los Angeles: $70,402,500
• San Francisco: $37,155,000
• Chicago: $45,861,500
• Houston: $37,500,000
• Washington D.C. $59,800,500

The "urban area" receiving the grant includes much more than the principal city.

The fifty-three Tier II recipients range from Toledo, Ohio ($1,264,500 ) and Bridgeport, Connecticut ($1,967,000) to Philadelphia ($18,139,000) and Dallas/Ft. Worth ($20,321,500). A listing of all 2008 recipients is available from the Department of Homeland Security.

Most Tier I jurisdictions did not see much change in funding from 2006-2007 to 2008. Tier II cities have tended to receive reduced grants as more areas have been added. For example in FY2006 Toledo received $3,850,000. In 2006 Louisville, Kentucky received $8,520,000, this year it will receive $1,421,500. Some of the difference has been made up with funding from other grant programs. But there is a clear trend to distribute UASI funds in a less-concentrated fashion.

The Tier I recipients often complain that they need even more funding. In 2007 Senate testimony New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg said, "“Time and time again, our calls for fully risk-based homeland security funding have been ignored,” the mayor said. “Instead, we have seen large sums of homeland security money spread across the country like peanut butter. More than $3 billion has been distributed in this irrational way so far.”

Risk is an outcome of threat, vulnerability, and consequence. Tier I areas receive a much greater proportion of UASI grants because their population density and economic importance would multiply the consequence of any successful attack. But as sustained efforts to reduce the vulnerability of these areas are effective, threats may shift to more vulnerable areas.

In August 1998 the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania were bombed. These targets were chosen after the first World Trade Center bombing (1993) was not entirely successful and reflected a combination of local vulnerability and local terrorist capability. A bombing of three state capitols - Sacramento, Austin, and Richmond - might achieve terrorist objectives as well as an attack on any Tier I city... and be easier too.

UASI funds give priority to regional, inter-agency, multi-disciplinary planning, organization, training, and exercising focused on terrorist threats. There is also a particular concern with Weapons of Mass Destruction.