To which at least a couple of states have replied: We are.
The money in question is more than $8 billion of homeland security grants dating to fiscal 2007 still in the pipelines around the country. At the National Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) and Homeland Security Conference in Columbus, Ohio, in May, Harman said there are good reasons that funding from previous grant cycles remains unspent but urged grantees to spend it.
Harman acknowledged that there are technical and procedural reasons for the slow drawdown of some grants and that certain grants take longer to spend. It was perceived that her message to spend the money correlates directly with Congress’ reluctance to continue to make available homeland security funds if money is still in the pipeline.
The perception that the grant funding isn’t being spent may lie in large part to a lack of understanding on the part of Congress as to how the money is spent.
Administrative Challenges
Plus, he said, there are administrative challenges in disbursing large sums of money, where time is a factor and where entities like the California Emergency Management Agency and major cities are responsible for sub-granting money to other agencies in the state.
The homeland security grants Murphy is talking about are three- (states) to five-year (UASI) grants that required significant planning and strategic investments. “We’re using strategy and addressing the actual gaps we have in California, and in doing that, you don’t spend the money in 12 months, you use the whole grant period.”
Rocky Vaz, Dallas’ intergovernmental services manager, said the notion that homeland security grants aren’t being spent isn’t true. “The misconception about the homeland security funds not being spent is false, and it’s tough to make everybody understand it.”
He said that to solve the problem, DHS grants should be administered like U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) grants where the money is drawn down up front. “You’re talking about large [DHS] projects that go all the way to the end of the performance period before they get drawn down,” he said. “If you have large deployments of software or large radio projects, or planning projects, you’re not drawing down all the money up front like a lot of DOJ grants.”
Vaz said the DOJ grants don’t receive the scrutiny from Congress because they get spent well within the performance period. “That’s a good model.” And he said the DHS funds aren’t drawn down directly. They get “bottlenecked” as they pass through the state administrative agency.
“Texas has probably 200 subgrantees, and we all spend our money over 24, 36 months that we have and we submit our reimbursement requests. Now the state has 200 grantees and they’re not going to submit reimbursement requests [to the feds] every time a grantee submits them; they’re going to hold them for a period.”
Vaz said most of the grant money is spent at the end of the performance period to maximize strategy. “If I have $8 million, I’ll spend a million on small projects for six, eight, 12 months, but the bulk of the $7 million will be spent at the end of the performance period so that I have everything in place and then I submit the reimbursement request.”
Strategic Approach
Both Murphy and Vaz said implementing plans for multiple jurisdictions takes time, especially when you have 1,100 cities in a UASI as Vaz does. “Every state and UASI has a strategy, and we implement our strategy based on the amount of monies we get,” Vaz said. “If it’s something that just Dallas needs, it doesn’t take long to get that done. Getting all the players together [and] mutual aid together is what takes the longest time.”
Vaz added that when homeland security grants were first deployed they were spent on equipment. But now with the money having to be spent strategically — technology upgrades, fusion centers, planning and exercising — it takes longer to spend the funds.
To show Congress that allocated grant funding is being spent, the DHS shortened the performance period to two years, which only exacerbates the problem, Vaz said. “Once we get the grant through DHS and the state, we’ve already lost six to eight months. Then every city has to go through its internal processes, so technically you have less than 12 months to implement a large, $10 million project. That is hurtful.”
That policy might lead to jurisdictions spending money quickly but not strategically, Vaz said. “What’s going to happen is you’re going to spend the money just because you have to — not strategically and where it’s really needed.”
An impediment to continued funding is that Congress hasn’t dug deep enough into the processes of how the grant money is spent to understand how it works and doesn’t see ROI in all the money spent, sources said. And FEMA has the unenviable task of educating the 500 or so committees it reports to.
Murphy said that for the DHS to send a message to spend the money assumes that no strategy work is being done and is “slightly shortsighted.” But added, “[Harman] is not just stuck between a rock and a hard place, but a rock and a rock.”
Vaz said Harman understands the process locals are going through. “It was more as if she was saying, ‘Draw the money down.’ There is emphasis on state administrative agencies to make sure they are drawing down the money quickly. Obviously it doesn’t look good when you’re asking for more money when you have $8 billion sitting on the books, but it’s being drawn down.”
Measuring ROI on homeland security deployments is difficult and performance measurements can’t be too broad or too narrow, Vaz said. “You can’t put everything in a box and say, ‘Here’s one to 10, go ahead and grade it.’ There has to be a different set of performance measurements, not just one.”
Murphy said California has become more efficient at spending the grant money over the last five years and the DHS has helped to that end. Los Angeles, for instance, created a special public safety calendar for homeland security grants with the aim of getting plans before the City Council as soon as possible. The state is committed to getting reimbursements to subgrantees within 30 days of receiving materials from the locals, Murphy said.
Addressing the Bottlenecks
The DHS responded to inquiries with recent written testimony from Harman. In it she said that it was important to understand that funds are being spent. “In the vast majority of cases, work is being performed, projects are under way and capabilities are being built,” Harman said. “In cases where funds do appear to be idle, [the Grant Programs Directorate] engages proactively with grantees to put funds to use.”
She said that based on grantees’ input, FEMA and the DHS tried in 2011 to evaluate ways to streamline the process and will implement in fiscal 2013 several measures that give flexibility to grantees and will help accelerate spending of grant funds in the pipeline.
Some of those measures include:
- allowing grantees to apply balances toward urgent priorities;
- allowing strategies for combating extremism activities;
- expanding maintenance and sustainment to equipment, training and critical resources; and
- waiving the 50 percent cap on personnel costs.
Vaz said the DHS is allowing the use of funds for sustainability and warranties. “That’s going to help a lot. It’s always been a challenge where you could only fund warranties or extended performance periods for something that you’d bought previously with UASI funds and it had to be within a performance period.”
