Chertoff: DHS takes disciplined approach for infrastructure protection

Chertoff: DHS takes disciplined approach for infrastructure protection The London subway and bus bombings have renewed questions about whether the U.S. government has directed enough resources to protect transit and rail systems. But Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Sunday the question isn’t how much money has been spent on a particular sector but whether it is wisely targeted to the areas most at risk.
   Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, Chertoff said the government has to take a risk-based approach to homeland security funding to avoid waste and close the most vulnerable security gaps.
   “We have got to move away from earmarking money for predetermined categories” to states and localities, Chertoff said, repeating a theme he has emphasized since taking office in March. Chertoff is working to change the department’s formula for disbursing funds for emergency responders and urban security that gave each state a portion of the available grant funding. Under the previous approach a rural state like Wyoming, considered less at risk as a terrorist target, received more money per capita than New York, site of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
   “I think if we are risk-based we are going to use that money much more effectively than if we parcel it out in packets,” Chertoff said, adding the money should go to the most vulnerable areas of the country based on population or critical infrastructure rather than trying to equalize money given to political jurisdictions.
   Chertoff skirted the question of whether enough money has been spent on rail and transit protection, saying the Bush administration’s 2006 budget request seeks more funds for infrastructure protection than in the past. Chertoff said rail and transit security funding is not only available from the proposed $600 million catch-all infrastructure protection grant program, but from billions of dollars in urban grants that cities and states can direct to meet transit needs. The federal government is also putting resources into explosives detection research and other broader categories that can benefit transportation networks and other priority assets, he said.
   About $300 million has been appropriated by Congress for rail and transit security since the 9/11 attacks.
   Security specialist Stephen Flynn, author of “America the Vulnerable: How Our Government is Failing to Protect Us From Terrorism,” said the Bush administration is not seeking adequate resources to tackle the homeland security challenge because it is fixated on taking the battle to the terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Coast Guard’s failing fleet of patrol boats and aircraft illustrates the imbalance between spending for national security and homeland security, he said.
   Flynn, a former Coast Guard commander who has called the sea service the equivalent of a Third World navy because so many Coast Guard cutters are more than 30 years old and in constant need of repairs, “said it is disgraceful that we are not giving them the tools they need” to patrol ports, inspect ships and port facilities, monitor vessel movements and maintain the higher operational tempo the service has dealt with since adding post-9/11 security missions to search and rescue, drug interdiction and other traditional missions.
   It will take 20 to 25 years to recapitalize the Coast Guard under the current Deepwater project. Flynn said the entire Coat Guard capability for three years can be funded for the same amount of money that it costs to build a new DDX destroyer for the Navy.