Security Debrief

First started in Fiscal Year 2005 when Congress appropriated $25 million to DHS to award to non-profits in 18 high-risk jurisdictions, the federal homeland security grant program for non-profits organizations serves little purpose and wastes finite resources without any evidence of terrorist threats against the recipients of the federal largesse. Now in its third year, DHS will have allocated over $64 million by the end of this fiscal year. New York’s junior senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, is asking for $25 million more for Fiscal Year 2010. With the federal budget already heavily into deficit spending, it makes little sense to continue a program that has little connection or impact on reducing the threat from a terrorist attack. As the Government Accountability Office found when it audited the program, DHS “had no information about credible threats against nonprofits by international terrorist organizations.” One media report highlighted one applicant where the leader admits that “[n]o terrorists have threatened the Ostrom Avenue house in the 28 years he had been the rabbi…[but] the federal government wastes more money on less-important issues.” This grant program indicates yet another example of DHS allocating finite federal funds disconnected from actual risks – coming after it ignored all risk data and the applications of eligible jurisdictions and just cut 42 out of 46 jurisdictions’ Fiscal Year 2007 allocations by 3% when it allocated funds for the Fiscal Year 2008 Urban Areas Security Initiative grant program. Congress must reform the federal homeland security grants in line with our previous recommendations and eliminate this wasteful program. Given how much states and localities spend on homeland security, if a jurisdiction feels a non-profit possesses a heightened degree of risk, then it can use its own money to harden it.