We asked Helmke about what state and local governments can expect this year from the federal government in terms of funding and coordination, and what can be done to help make cities safer.
A: In the context of homeland security, we've got the same sort of challenge -- to show that when we receive dollars, we're using them wisely, that cities are using them for things that would either prevent an incident or allow a quicker response to an incident.
What's tough is a lot of cities still haven't received that much in the way of funds. Or when they've received it, it's channeled through the state or somebody else who's already made a decision on what it's going to be used for.
At this stage, it's still sort of in the back and forth. The mayors still haven't had enough discretion yet on where they want to spend it. The money is starting to get through the pipeline a little bit better in the last few months, but the challenge still is how do you show that you've used it wisely.
My main point is you can show you've used it wisely if you can show it's an investment that fits with past investments and is likely to fit with new technologies that might come along in the next six months to a year -- that it can be used not just for terrorism but for the floods or the blizzards or the mudslides, natural disasters and could be used for a hazardous substance spill on the streets, or even day-to-day-type operations.
You need to show that it's both helping the response, helping prevent the danger, and fits with the other funds that have been spent.
Q: It's incredible that some locals haven't done vulnerability assessments.
A: I agree. One thing we recommend is before you take any major step, you ought to be doing a decent threat and vulnerability assessment that analyzes what's vulnerable, what's critical, what's been threatened in the past. We've helped some cities put together an R-score, risk-score-type thing and use that.
The catch, when I talk to some cities, is sometimes the state has done it for them. But sometimes these things are just checklists that get filled out and don't really help them design a true response and don't help prepare for where the money is going to go.
Sometimes cities have done them and they're decent assessments, but then the danger is it gets put on a shelf someplace or it doesn't really drive where the dollars are going. My sense in talking to locals and homeland security officials is that a lot of the money is going to start getting distributed not just based on population, but is going to be based on some well done threat and vulnerability assessment.
I was talking to the mayor of Las Vegas when I was out there. Part of their argument is it's a city of maybe 450,000 to 500,000, but when you count all the tourists and visitors, its threat level would be a little bit higher than perhaps a city its size would ordinarily have.
Q: You mentioned some cities are just starting to get money. What's holding up the process?
A: My sense is there are a number of factors. One is that the basic process adopted at the federal level was to distribute these funds to the states. Then have the states send them to the locals. It's an understandable formula, but a lot of times it still takes a lot for the money to get from the feds to the states, then the state has to figure out how it's going to split the money up, and this is sometimes where the state has come up with, "We need gas masks, or this or that."
Oftentimes I sense the state just looked at things they wanted to buy for a long time and is now buying them with the funds rather than working with cities and counties to figure out what they really need.
One thing the mayors have argued is to look at a distribution method more like the community development block grant program. Community development block grants have been around since 1975 to deal with housing and community economic development issues. Basically close to 75 percent of the money goes directly to cities over 50,000. The other 25 percent goes to state capitals to deal with smaller cities.
Mayors have said, "Why don't we set up the homeland security money like a homeland security block grant that's similar?" You get direct distribution to the locals for the larger cities. You'd probably use a different population cutoff, say 200,000 or 500,000, to get the money there quickly.
Part of it too is just little technical things. Some mayors and governors have been on committees in this last year to try and work this out. It used to be that you couldn't get the money until you'd shown that you spent the money, but you couldn't really spend the money if you didn't have it.
At the local level, you can't just buy something and wait for the feds to reimburse it. They've made some changes in the program to make that better. I still think there could be some headaches with it, but they've tried to fix that problem.
Part of it is some folks making the decisions don't understand how government purchasing works at the state or local level.
Q: Is the funding distribution process improved for fiscal 2005? What can states and locals do to help improve the process?
A: I think it's going to work better than it was. As with all new processes, you find out as you're doing it. A lot of the mayors are still taking a wait and see attitude.
I think you'll see more push on this now that the elections are over. During election season last year, mayors didn't want it to become political. Republican mayors didn't want to criticize. Now that the elections are over, there's going to be less partisanship that comes to the whole argument and hopefully more of a focus on how we can make sure this thing is working.
Q: There's been some criticism of how the locals spent some homeland security money. Is that fair criticism?
A: I don't think there's been that much criticism because most of them haven't gotten too much. When I've seen criticism, it's often come from the locals who said, "This is what the state told us we had to get." I haven't really heard any stories of folks at the local level misspending the money.
You have suspicions from some people at the federal level who say, "Oh you're just using this to pay for things for general public safety that you were going to do anyway." But sometimes that's still the right call. Just because it's something that can have a day-to-day benefit doesn't mean it's not going to make a difference in responding to or preventing a tragedy.
One thing they ought to be questioning is the feds telling [Washington], D.C., they have to use homeland security dollars for the presidential inaugural. Talk about a misuse of funds. Here's something that happens every four years that ought to be in somebody's budget some place.
Q: Tom Ridge stepped down as homeland security director and has been replaced by Michael Chertoff. Should states and locals expect any change in the way the DHS is run?
A: Too early to tell. People thought highly of Ridge. A former governor [and] politician, he was sensitive to the political concerns, the needs of cities. Sometimes there's suspicion of former governors that they think too much about the states and not enough about the locals, but I think generally Ridge got good reviews.
There's hope that things will start getting better and less political. It may be that the issue is not going to be looking good politically -- and this is not a criticism of Ridge -- but the focus will be on how the pipeline is working and the dollars are getting where they're supposed to, and that we're focusing on real threats and the things we should be focusing on.
Q: Do states and locals need more guidance from the feds on what to prepare for and how?
A: I'd probably flip it and say the federal government needs more guidance from states and locals. I think [the feds] want to work on it. The real challenge the last three years was that this [Department of Homeland Security] was put together so quickly, no one was sure how to make it work. Thank goodness there hasn't been a major incident that makes everybody question what's been done and want to redo it.
There are a lot of folks concerned that rhetoric hasn't translated into reality in what they'd like to do and see at the local level.
Q: Are we doing a good enough job of fighting the homeland security war at home?
A: A lot is being done, but a lot more could be done -- just being able to access some of the new technologies out there. Most mayors I talk to know things that could make their cities safer and help them be part of a consistent unified national response aren't happening.
Hopefully it's moving in the right direction. Some mayors are concerned that the focus overseas means fewer dollars for cities. Ridge, the other day, had a good comment that homeland security starts with keeping the home front safe. That's clearly what mayors believe, but [they] want to see that turned into some dollars. They feel they're getting the rhetoric and folks wanting to help, but it's not always there.
Q: Do the locals know how to access these grants?
A: Yes and no. I've heard stories that they don't know how to access it, but once they've walked through it with the people at homeland security, it's gone very smoothly. I've heard of others who still aren't sure how it's supposed to work. If you're in a city that's not as sophisticated in grant writing or doesn't have good federal contacts and if they don't know who to talk to, they sometimes give up on it.
The main thing is just keep pushing. It goes back to doing a threat and vulnerability assessment. Sometimes high-risk areas are in small communities. If you've got a nuclear power plant or something that's not in Cleveland or Akron but in a small town somewhere in between, that's something you need to make sure is covered by a threat and vulnerability assessment.
That's part of the huge challenge here too, [which] is to make sure there are regional responses. One of the ideas behind having the funds go statewide is that it would help cut across the city, county, township borders, but I'm not sure that's happening yet.
Some mayors want to do more with the surrounding communities, but there's not a real good sense of how to make it work. Part of that's just history and turf and everything else.
