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The bureaucracy of fighting terror Millions of homeland security dollars flowing through new agencies and committees haven't been getting where they're needed By G.W. Schulzgwschulz@sfbg.com In the classic '80s comedy Brewster's Millions, Richard Pryor's character receives a $300 million inheritance from a distant relative with one catch: He must spend $30 million of the money in 30 days. State and local jurisdictions suddenly infused with enormous stores of homeland security cash face a similar scenario. Each year, when California submits its request for homeland security funding to the feds, it must include a description of how it intends to use the money. However, for some time the state's Office of Homeland Security was short the staff necessary to properly audit spending at the local level. So much of the money just sat there. Between 2000 and 2004, California received approximately $900 million in federal funds from five homeland security and bioterrorism preparedness grant programs, according to last year's annual budget review from the state Legislative Analyst's Office. By early 2005, almost a third of that money still hadn't been spent, largely due to the bureaucratic lethargy of the two state agencies charged with distributing it: the OHS and the California Department of Health Services. Last year's LAO report criticizing the bureaucratic bottleneck made many recommendations, but only now is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger addressing the problem, in a report due to the legislature Feb. 1, as the Guardian goes to press. "My impression is that [Schwarzenegger] has taken steps to change the procedure and develop a greater sense of urgency," said Michael Cohen, director of state administration for the LAO. Yet at the same time, even more bureaucratic obstacles are being erected, hindering good old-fashioned disaster preparedness and public health efforts in the name of building a better terrorist-fighting infrastructure. The OHS, Cohen said, is formulating its own independent terrorism-response strategy and failing to combine its efforts with those of health officials to address other serious potential tragedies. This two-track system, he added, is "still a concern to us." And as the year began, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced a new, risk-based distribution of federal funds – the Urban Area Security Grant Initiative – that has San Francisco forming a committee with 11 other Bay Area cities and counties to compete with 35 other population centers for a dwindling pot of terror-fighting cash. So we have political leaders announcing new programs, studies looking at the dysfunctions of massive new bureaucracies, a proliferation of committees competing against other committees – and local governments everywhere struggling to provide basic police, fire, and public health services. Welcome to the war on terrorism. . . . John Hanley, president of the San Francisco Fire Fighters Union, Local 798, said the process should be made as simple as possible: Funding formulas that pit less densely populated areas of the state against target-rich San Francisco have already created enough problems. "You don't need to reinvent the wheel for when disaster strikes," he added. "You just need the equipment and proper staffing." For Hanley, fires eating up Southern California and floods inundating Marin County are as big a concern as terrorism. But OHS spokesperson Chris Bertelli said that when the state submits requests to the federal homeland security office, the applications must include a "terrorism nexus." In other words, California must explain how the money will be used for fighting potential nerve-gas attacks, not for recovering from earthquakes. However, the LAO and other analysts still argue that state agencies should design a single strategic approach for fighting either Mother Nature or al-Qaeda. "First-responders are going to have a set of guidelines regardless of why the building went down," Bertelli said. He insists that the state is getting better at administering its windfall of antiterror money, and says that since the LAO's 2005 report, "we did revise our homeland security strategy, and we did it in consultation with Health Services." That said, getting local jurisdictions to efficiently adapt to the twin threats of natural disasters and terrorism doesn't do any good if they can't get the money they've been promised. The LAO report noted that while the state's health and homeland security offices had committed much of their grant monies on paper by last year, more than $600 million of the total amount they'd received since 2000 had not actually reached its intended destinations. While the state has had a year to improve its homeland security spending since the LAO's last report, the State Auditor's Office last August found that health officials weren't getting money fast enough to the local government agencies in need, or simply weren't spending what they already had. Local emergency workers say one problem has been reimbursement. Cities and counties, for the most part, must pay for equipment and training from their own coffers and wait for the state to pay them back. Bertelli, whose office had only a few employees when it was formed, admitted that reimbursement has been a problem but said that the state had improved that process by "leaps and bounds" since taking on new administrators to help process requests. His office was only formed by executive order two years ago, and "each year it gets better." But Hanley said the city struggled to get reimbursement from the state after helping to squelch San Diego's raging fires during fall 2003. The exhaustive paperwork, he added, is the worst part. "When there are natural disasters, and the SF Fire Department is dispatched," he said, "it takes months to get the money back." . . . The LAO and Bertelli put some of the blame on state and local procurement laws. Schwarzenegger cruised into office on a wide-eyed crusade to clean up wasteful government spending, and the California Performance Review he created to trim the fat noted that the state's procurement laws were a mess and had been for decades. Still, the OHS's failure to get its money out the door was enough for a young state assemblymember to call last summer for a full audit of the federal funds California has received for fighting terror. Hector De La Torre (D-South Gate), whose District 50 covers several small cities in southeast Los Angeles County, has become a regular critic of the Schwarzenegger administration's handling of the money. As part of his audit request, De La Torre cited the LAO report as well as a national Trust for America's Health study released in December 2004 that ranked California poorly among other states in bioterrorism preparedness. The newest TFAH study, released in late December, doesn't give much more credit to the state. "Public health has generally been underfunded for the last several decades," said Michael Earls, a coauthor of the TFAH report. Earls added that while a lot of investment has gone into "some important technological bells and whistles" to fight bioterrorism nationwide, the threat of pandemic flus has long been just as real and has not received much attention until very recently. Earls believes that dormant terrorism funding could be made available for basic public health efforts. "This money isn't something we should wait to utilize," said Juan Torres, chief of staff to De La Torre. "California is in the unique position of being a tourist attraction. We should be maximizing our money. Should we look at bridges? Should we look at our ports? How do we alert our hospitals?" The latest TFAH study, for its part, states that 34 states and Washington, DC, have worked with their local health departments to quickly arm hospital workers with vaccines or antivirals, but California is not among them. . . . Laura Edelman, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Office of Emergency Services and Homeland Security, told us her office is unconcerned about jurisdictional clashes with other Bay Area cities and counties over the urban security money. San Francisco, she said, had managed a similar, albeit smaller, relationship with Oakland and San Jose last year. San Francisco received $18 million from the grants in 2005 and $26 million the year before. "We believe using the grant funding on a regional basis is the best way to go," she said. "We think we're in pretty good shape." A Request for Qualifications issued by the city in early January – presumably in anticipation of the urban security grants the Bay Area will ask for – shows that San Francisco's homeland security office is looking for consultants to help with "program development services, specifically in the areas of public health, bioterrorism, and medical surge capacity." Detailed bids for the work are due Feb. 3. The OHS's Bertelli says San Francisco survived new protocols for the urban security money, while San Diego, Sacramento, and Las Vegas, for instance, won't be eligible for them after 2006. SFBG Alphabet soup Here are the acronyms of some of the agencies involved in the war-on-terror funding flow DHS (United States): Department of Homeland Security OHS (California): Office of Homeland Security OES (California): Governor's Office of Emergency Services LAO (California): Legislative Analyst's Office CDHS (California): California Department of Health Services OES&HS (San Francisco): Office of Emergency Services and Homeland Security SFFD (San Francisco): San Francisco Fire Department |
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