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H.R. 3266, FASTER AND SMARTER FUNDING FOR

FIRST RESPONDERS ACT OF 2003

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGENCY 

PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE

OF THE

SELECT COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND 

SECURITY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

OCTOBER 16, 2003

Serial No. 108–31

Printed for the use of the Select Committee on Homeland Security

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house
SELECT COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY 

CHRISTOPHER COX, California, Chairman 

JENNIFER DUNN, Washington 

C.W. BILL YOUNG, Florida 

DON YOUNG, Alaska 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

W.J. (BILLY) TAUZIN, Louisiana 

DAVID DREIER, California 

DUNCAN HUNTER, California 

HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky 

SHERWOOD BOEHLERT, New York 

LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas 

CURT WELDON, Pennsylvania 

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut 

PORTER J. GOSS, Florida 

DAVE CAMP, Michigan 

LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia 

ERNEST J. ISTOOK, Jr., Oklahoma 

PETER T. KING, New York 

JOHN LINDER, Georgia 

JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona 

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana 

MAC THORNBERRY, Texas 

JIM GIBBONS, Nevada 

KAY GRANGER, Texas 

PETE SESSIONS, Texas 

JOHN E. SWEENEY, New York 

JIM TURNER, Texas, Ranking Member 

BENNIE G. THOMPSON, Mississippi 

LORETTA SANCHEZ, California 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington 

BARNEY FRANK, Massachusetts 

JANE HARMAN, California 

BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland 

LOUISE MCINTOSH SLAUGHTER, 

New York 

PETER A. DEFAZIO, Oregon 

NITA M. LOWEY, New York 

ROBERT E. ANDREWS, New Jersey 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, 

District of Columbia 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

KAREN MCCARTHY, Missouri 

SHEILA JACKSON-LEE, Texas 

BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey 

DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, 

U.S. Virgin Islands 

BOB ETHERIDGE, North Carolina 

CHARLES GONZALEZ, Texas 

KEN LUCAS, Kentucky 

JAMES R. LANGEVIN, Rhode Island 

KENDRICK B. MEEK, Florida 

JOHN GANNON, Chief of Staff 

UTTAM DHILLON, Chief Counsel and Deputy Staff Director 

DAVID H. SCHANZER, Democrat Staff Director 

MICHAEL S. TWINCHEK, Chief Clerk 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE

John Shadegg, Arizona, Chairman 

Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania, Vice Chairman 

W.J. ‘‘Billy’’ Tauzin, Louisiana 

Christopher Shays, Connecticut 

Dave Camp, Michigan 

Lincoln Diaz–Balart, Florida 

Peter King, New York 

Mark Souder, Indiana 

Mac Thornberry, Texas 

Jim Gibbons, Nevada 

Kay Granger, Texas 

Pete Sessions, Texas 

Christopher Cox, California, ex officio 

Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi 

Jane Harman, California 

Benjamin L. Cardin, Maryland 

Peter A. DeFazio, Oregon 

Nita M. Lowey, New York 

Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Columbia 

Bill Pascrell, Jr., New Jersey 

Donna M. Christensen, U.S. Virgin Islands 

Bob Etheridge, North Carolina 

Ken Lucas, Kentucky 

Jim Turner, Texas, ex officio

(II) 
(III)

CONTENTS 

Page 

STATEMENTS

The Honorable John B. Shadegg, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Arizona, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness and Response ............................................................................................... 1

The Honorable Bennie Thompson, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Mississippi, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Emergency 

Preparedness and Response ................................................................................ 2

The Honorable Christopher Cox, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of California, and Chairman, Select Committee on Homeland Security ......... 4

The Honorable Jim Turner, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Texas ................................................................................................................. 6

The Honorable Benjamin L. Cardin, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Maryland ................................................................................................ 14

The Honorable Bob Etheridge, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of North Carolina ................................................................................................. 38

The Honorable Barney Frank, a Representative in Congresss from the State 

Massachusetts ...................................................................................................... 10 

The Honorable Jim Gibbons, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Nevada .............................................................................................................. 10

The Honorable Bill Pascrell, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the 

State of New Jersey ............................................................................................. 12

The Honorable Christopher Shays, a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Connecticut ............................................................................................. 11

The Honorable Curt Weldon, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Pennsylvania .................................................................................................... 8

WITNESSES 

The Honorable James A. Garner, Mayor of Hempstead, New York, President, 

The United States Conference of Mayors 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 15

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 18

Colonel Randy Larsen (Retired), Founder and CEO, Homeland Security Associates, Former Director of Institute of Homeland Security, Former Chairman of Military Department at the National War College 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 19

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 22

Mr. Robert Latham, Director, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency 

Oral Statement ..................................................................................................... 24

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 26

APPENDIX 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

Questions and Responses from the Honorable James A. Garner ........................ 49

Questions and Responses from Colonel Randy Larsen (Retired) ......................... 49 

Questions and Responses from Mr. Robert Latham ............................................. 50 

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H.R. 3266 FASTER AND SMARTER FUNDING 

FOR FIRST RESPONDERS ACT OF 2003

Thursday, October 16, 2003

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMERGENCY

PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE, SELECT COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY, Washington, D.C. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 4:05 p.m., in Room 

2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John B. Shadegg 

[chairman of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Shadegg, Tauzin, Shays, Diaz-Balart, 

Gibbons, Cox [ex officio], Thompson, Cardin, Norton, Pascrell, 

Etheridge, Lucas, and Turner [ex officio]. 

Also Present: Representatives Dunn and Frank. 

Mr. SHADEGG. The committee will come to order. 

I want to welcome our witnesses. I understand one is still downstairs, but in the interest of proceeding in a timely fashion, I think 

we should get started and begin with opening statements. 

Today our subcommittee will be examining the Faster and 

Smarter Funding for First Responders Act, which has been introduced by full committee Chairman Cox. 

I think there has been a high level of frustration among members on both sides of the aisle about how long it has taken for the 

large amounts of money which we have appropriated here in Congress for our Nation’s homeland security needs and first responders 

to end up in the hands of those who can put it to its intended use. 

The States claim they have allocated the money, but many cities 

claim they have yet to see a penny. Clearly these mixed messages 

send a message themselves to us in Congress that it is time to look 

at changing the homeland security grant-making process to hopefully make it smoother, smarter, and more agile in responding to 

new and different threats that arise. 

As we examine changing the homeland security grant process, it 

is clear that we need to take a look at both regional approaches 

and at threat-based formulas, two of the major components of H.R. 

3266. We can neither afford from a financial perspective nor a public policy perspective to provide new equipment for each and every 

fire and police department in the country. Communities are going 

to need to cooperate in their war on terrorism by working together 

to pool resources and to regionalize plans. Unfortunately, politics 

has long stood in the way of such cooperation at the local level. As 

Kwame Kilpatrick, Mayor of Detroit, testified at a Senate Government Affairs hearing, quote: These plans can’t be piecemeal, and 
2

that is why I believe so much money is being wasted when it comes 

to our State, because we want to give money to this plan or that 

plan instead of forcing the regions around the State of Michigan to 

get together and deal with this in a comprehensive form. 

We also need to look at making sure that we are devoting this 

homeland security money in a smarter way so it actually gets to 

the areas facing the largest threat. 

I was shocked, as I am sure many of you were, to read in USA 

Today, in an article from July, in which we learned that an Oak 

Bluffs, Massachusetts harbor master claimed, quote: Quite honestly, I don’t know what we are going to do, but you don’t turn 

down grant money. 

That is not a good indication that the system we have in place 

is working well. 

Last week, our full committee received testimony that epitomizes 

how, under the current grant formula, we are likely sending money 

to areas where there is little or limited risk of a terrorist attack. 

Michele Flournoy from CSIS stated: Without a regular, disciplined, 

and comprehensive threat and vulnerability assessment process 

that considers both the probability of various attacks and the severity of their consequences, decisionmakers will have little analytic basis for making tough strategy choices about where to place 

emphasis, where to accept or manage the degree of risk, and how 

best to allocate resources to improve America’s securities. 

We need to determine the actual risk involved and figure out 

how our funding choices will either eliminate that risk or mitigate 

it to the greatest degree possible. We have to be smarter than our 

adversaries and capitalize on our intelligence-gathering capability 

and technological advantages. 

I commend Chairman Cox for this forward-thinking section of the 

bill. We look forward to learning more about the proposal today, 

and I look forward to input from our excellent panel of witnesses. 

It seems to me that it is absolutely essential that Congress spend 

these monies wisely, and that we get them into the hands of the 

first responders who need those monies, and that we prioritize and 

allocate them as strategically as humanly possible. And so I think 

this legislation and this discussion, which will go on regarding this 

legislation and other pieces of legislation that address the same 

topic, is critically important for this Congress to act on and act on 

very quickly. And I am pleased the issue is before the subcommittee. 

It is now my pleasure to turn to the gentleman from Mississippi, 

the Ranking Member of this subcommittee, Mr. Thompson, for his 

opening statement. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, I would like to 

welcome Mr. Robert Latham, the Director of Emergency Management for the State of Mississippi, for joining us today. And I look 

forward to his perspective on the preparedness needs of my home 

State which includes a diverse urban, suburban, rural, and agricultural community. 

But, Mr. Chairman, I must express my disagreement with the 

focus of this hearing. As the majority is well aware, Democrats on 

the Homeland Security Committee have introduced comprehensive 

first responder legislation entitled the Preparer Act. This legisla-
3

tion, introduced on September 24th, and now co-sponsored by 141 

Members of Congress including the Ranking Members of the 10 

standing committees of the House, addresses issues similar to 

those in Chairman Cox’s bill. Although I understand that next 

week’s full committee hearing on first responder legislation will be 

broader in scope, it seems to me that the members of both sides 

of this subcommittee would be better served by a hearing on both 

legislative proposals. 

Having said that, I would like to point out some key differences 

between the two proposals and explain why the Preparer Act better 

addresses the needs of our first responder community. 

There are three key principles embodied in the Preparer Act that 

distinguish it from Chairman Cox’s legislation. First, the Preparer 

Act protects all communities. Our legislation recognizes that in the 

aftermath of September 11th, every community must be better prepared for terrorist attacks. This includes urban, suburban, rural, 

and agricultural communities. 

Under Chairman Cox’s proposal, it appears that we will create 

grant winners and losers. Grant applications will be submitted and 

grantees will have to depend on the strength of their applications 

and the untested threat and intelligence analysis capabilities of the 

Department of Homeland Security in order to receive a grant. To 

me it sounds too much like buying a lottery ticket and taking a 

chance. 

Further, in 1995, did any of us consider Oklahoma City to be 

under an extremist terrorist threat? If the Chairman’s proposal 

was in law at that time, I am not sure that Oklahoma City would 

have received grant funds, but it is certain that the city would have 

benefitted from enhanced preparedness capability. 

Second, the Preparer Act will result in more robust planning and 

coordination within the States. In previous hearings, we have 

heard testimony about neighboring communities buying the same 

equipment, resulting in unnecessary expenditure and duplicative 

requirements. By conducting bottom-up assessments and coordinating preparedness needs at the local, regional, and state levels, 

the Preparer Act will distribute funding on a rational cooperative 

manner. 

Under the Chairman’s bill, any State or eligible region can apply 

for grant funds. Our question is DHS’s ability to process a seemingly unlimited number of grant applications. 

Further, how will be applications be coordinated? How does the 

Chairman’s proposal resolve the problem of overlapping and duplicative capabilities? 

Third, the Preparer Act recognizes that our first responder community plays a most critical role in determining our preparedness 

needs. That is why the legislation creates an independent task 

force to develop and provide to our communities the tools they need 

to determine what capabilities they have today, what capabilities 

they need to be truly prepared, and what resources are required to 

build these capabilities. I can think of no better advisers on this 

issue than our police, firefighters, emergency medical services, hospital personnel, and others who face this problem every day. 

There are some areas of agreement, Mr. Chairman, between the 

Preparer Act and the Chairman’s proposal, including revisions to 
4

the homeland security advisory system and the preservation of traditional first responder grant programs like the fire grant. We will 

continue to work with the majority to find other areas of agreement, and hopefully pass a bipartisan bill that will enhance this 

Nation’s preparedness for terrorism. However, our efforts must enhance preparedness throughout this Nation. We cannot shift resources from day to day based on ever-changing threat information. 

The only way to truly prepare this Nation is to recognize the need 

to build capabilities in every town, city, county, and State. We owe 

this to our emergency responders, and we need to move faster in 

our efforts to do so. 

Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman for his opening statement 

and now call upon the Chairman of the full committee for his opening statement. Mr. Cox. 

Mr. COX. Thank you, Chairman Shadegg. And I assure the Ranking Member that the majority and the minority will work together. 

It is our aim to achieve bipartisan legislation. 

The questions that the gentleman raises are legitimate ones, and 

I believe that they can all be addressed. I also think that it is a 

happy occurrence that the legislation introduced separately by the 

minority and the majority are, for the most part, complementary 

rather than outright contradicting one another. And I think these 

pieces will fit together very nicely, at least potentially; but it will 

require a fair amount of work, and we are starting that process 

today. 

I think that Congress has recognized, and certainly this committee has recognized, the vital role that first responders play from 

the moment of our horror at the events of September 11th. But in 

particular, this committee, through our hearings in Washington 

and our field hearings around the country, has heard the message 

loudly and clearly that the monies, including over $20 billion that 

the Congress has appropriated since 9/11 explicitly for first responders, that we intend to benefit firefighters, police, and emergency services personnel, medical workers, paramedics and so on, 

that that money is not getting to its intended destination, or at 

least it is not getting there nearly fast enough. The more than 

1,000 percent increase in first responder funding since 9/11 evidently is not enough to solve the problem. We have got to be smarter and faster about getting money to first responders. In the $30 billion appropriation that the President just signed for 

the Department of Homeland Security, its first appropriation ever, 

fully 4.2 billion is earmarked for first responders. But it won’t do 

nearly enough good if that money gets stuck in the pipeline, if that 

money doesn’t get to where it is most needed. We have got to work 

harder to ensure that homeland security grants are distributed 

quickly to the people who need the most. 

Our grant-making process for first responders, however, was 

built before September 11th. It was built for a world where traditional roles of first responders were more narrowly defined and 

where they were not focused on counterterrorism. 

The National Conference of Mayors, whose president, Mayor 

James Garner, is here with us today, recognized this problem. In 

the Conference’s report titled ‘‘Tracking Homeland Security Funds 

Sent to the 50 States,’’ the mayors note that 90 percent of cities 
5

have not received funds from the country’s largest homeland security program. In addition, over half of the cities either haven’t been 

consulted by their state homeland security agencies or haven’t had 

an opportunity to influence state decisionmaking about how to use 

and distribute funding. 

I look forward to hearing Mayor Garner speak more about the results of this survey. It is abundantly clear already that much of the 

$20 billion that Congress has appropriated for first responders isn’t 

reaching them. 

Federal funds need to be directed to areas where we are most at 

risk, but today too much of the homeland security grant monies are 

allocated by political formula, not by authoritative risk assessment 

that matches threat with vulnerability. 

Chairman Shadegg described the surprise of the harbor master 

in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts when he received $900,000 in homeland security grants and didn’t know what to do with it. A similar 

story was repeated in Christian County, Kentucky, population 

100,000, when they learned they were getting $36,800 for high-tech 

safety equipment. The local emergency services director didn’t want 

to look a gift horse in the mouth, but said that the high-tech equipment didn’t particularly suit the more routine needs of his small 

rural community. We need a threat-based formula that will eliminate such waste and potential abuse. 

H.R. 3266, the Faster and Smarter Funding for First Responders 

Act, addresses these problems. To expedite delivery of funding, 

both States and regions could apply for grants. When States receive Federal funds, the bill requires 80 percent of the money to 

be passed to locals within 45 days. The bill also builds in penalties 

to States that do not comply with these requirements. 

In allowing regions to apply directly for grants, we are taking 

into account the fact that our country’s artificial State boundaries 

do not necessarily represent logical, sensible homeland security 

planning areas. Evacuating the National Capital Region, for example, would involve multiple States. A grant under this legislation 

could be made to a multistate region. As a result, we could avoid 

problems from money trickling in from the Maryland and Virginia 

governments because they and only they could apply for funds directly from DHS. 

In California where we have 30 million people, the State could 

apply for monies from regions within California. Los Angeles and 

Orange Counties, for example, which already have an extensive 

system of mutual aid agreements among the cities and among the 

counties, could continue to build their partnership and apply jointly 

for grants. When recently this committee visited the Puget Sound 

area, we heard the same plea from first responders there: Focus on 

regional solutions. Regional cooperation is fundamental to the success of the President’s homeland security strategy. We must encourage it by ensuring that funds earmarked for regions do not get 

bogged down in layers of bureaucracy. 

Today more than ever we must maximize the yield for every dollar we invest in homeland security, and so this legislation charges 

DHS to prioritize threat and vulnerability in distributing grants to 

the exclusion of political formulas. Since 9/11, we have identified 
6

serious problems with our grant-making process, and with this legislation we move towards solutions. 

I look forward to hearing the thoughts of our witnesses on this 

bill and on the minority bill, and to working with the Ranking 

Members who have introduced separate legislation with other 

members of this committee to ensure that we fix the inefficiencies 

in our grant-making process and our funding of first responders becomes both faster and smarter. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHADEGG. The Chair will now call upon Mr. Turner of Texas, 

the Ranking Member of the full committee, for his opening statement. 

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I think it is clear to all of us that fighting and winning the war 

on terror requires a strong and sustained effort both overseas and 

here at home. Just 24 hours ago, I returned from a visit with our 

troops on the front lines in Iraq, and I must say that the commitment, dedication, and bravery exhibited by those troops in the face 

of many threats was an inspiration to me, and it would be to you 

as well. 

Our troops in Iraq and in other places like Afghanistan have 

been called on to fight on the front lines of this war on terror. The 

effectiveness of our troops is the result of decades of building capabilities. We buy them the best equipment, we train them extensively, and they spend countless hours planning and working to 

execute their responsibilities. 

We are here today to ensure that those on the front line here at 

home, America’s first responders, are also fully prepared to respond 

to and to recover from a catastrophic act of terrorism. This is a new 

mission for first responders. Billions of dollars have been spent 

since the Cold War on building our Armed Forces. It will take time 

and focus to build our capabilities for homeland defense. 

Just a month or so ago, the Council on Foreign Relations assembled a bipartisan, expert task force led by former United States 

Senator Warren Rudman. They reported that America’s first responders were, and I quote, drastically underfunded and dangerously unprepared. 

After 18 months of listening to America’s firefighters, police, and 

emergency workers state and restate their need for better training 

and better equipment, 23 members of this committee and 142 

Members of the full House introduced legislation, H.R. 3158, the 

Prepare Act, to address the current problems of our first responders. The legislation that we introduced has four major goals. 

First, we need to create a task force to identify what our communities need across the country to prevent, prepare for, and respond 

to terrorist attacks. This must be a bottoms-up process involving 

local officials and local first responders. Under our current system, 

we are spending an arbitrary amount of money every year with no 

defined goals; no benchmarks by which we can measure progress 

toward protecting our communities both large and small. 

Secondly, the Prepare Act seeks to move our entire country forward by reaching a level of—a minimum level of preparedness 

within a defined period of time. We recognize that areas that face 

a higher threat of attack and have sustained or substantial 
7

vulnerabilities should and must receive a greater proportion of 

available funding. But we also recognize that no community in 

America is as prepared as it should be to meet the threat of global 

terrorism in the 21st century. 

As Ranking Member Thompson mentioned, no one could have 

foreseen that Oklahoma City would be targeted by a terrorist act, 

and Oklahoma City is not likely to appear today on anyone’s list 

of high-threat terrorist targets. The Prepare Act recognizes that 

terrorism by its very nature is unpredictable, and therefore the legislation would seek to increase the preparedness of every community in America. 

Third, the Prepare Act requires planning and coordination to ensure that every community in America has access to the emergency 

response services they need, while at the same time preventing duplication and waste. I commend the Chairman on his vision for regional funding. I think it is an area of agreement between the two 

of us and the members on both sides of the aisle. Unfortunately, 

nothing in our current grant program prevents neighboring communities from developing, for example, two HAZMAT units when 

one will do. We need to ensure that scarce resources are spent 

wisely by requiring, whenever possible, services to be shared at the 

regional, State, and even multistate level. 

And, finally, the Prepare Act recognizes that difficulties with the 

grant programs are not the only challenge facing our first responders. Our legislation would address the problems of interoperability 

of communications equipment, establish training and equipment 

guidelines so that our first responders know what to purchase, and 

would take additional steps such as reforming the homeland security advisory system. 

Chairman Cox has introduced H.R. 3266, the subject of the hearing today, and I compliment the Chairman for his efforts and look 

forward to working with him over the coming weeks to develop a 

bipartisan bill. Both bills have the same ultimate goal, to direct 

funding to our first responder communities as quickly as possible 

and to direct resources where they are needed the most. We go 

about achieving this goal in different ways, which I hope we will 

be discussing today. 

Chairman Cox’s bill would base preparedness funding exclusively 

upon a snapshot of the threat faced by the State or region applying 

for the grant. While this is an interesting and appealing concept, 

it also raises some difficult issues. 

First, since all of our communities continue to have preparedness 

needs, how can we attempt to meet their needs while at the same 

time targeting directed resources to the communities with the 

threats of the moment? 

Second, threat information today may not be specific enough to 

form the basis for a competitive grant program. I always have admired Mr. Weldon’s leadership in the fire grant program. It has 

provided a basic level of preparedness to defend against the threat 

of fires in communities all across America. But predicting where 

those fires will occur would in fact be an impossible task, and we 

may face the same difficulty in dealing with the threat of terrorist 

attack. How can we, for example, measure with precision whether 
8

Houston faces a greater threat than Orange County? And won’t 

this change from week to week or from year to year? 

The last three times the Department of Homeland Security has 

raised the threat level, it has been in response to a nonspecific 

threat. So because we do not know for sure where terrorists intend 

to attack, doesn’t it make sense to build our capabilities nationwide 

in light of the threats and vulnerabilities we face to protect all of 

our communities to the best of our ability? 

And, finally, how is it possible, with a grant program based entirely on threat, to encourage and reward comprehensive planning 

and coordination between neighboring communities to maximize 

the value of taxpayer dollars and avoid duplication? 

Mr. Chairman, our enemies in the war on terror plot and plan 

every day. We could not have foreseen the depths of their depravity 

in slamming airliners into skyscrapers and killing thousands of civilians. Threats to our Nation do and will continue to change daily. 

And so in pursuit of our mission to protect the American people, 

we must ensure that first responders have the capability and the 

flexibility to protect our communities. What we have proposed in 

the Prepare Act is that we must move faster and stronger to protect all of America’s communities from the threat of terrorist attack. We must pledge that when it comes to protecting the American people, no community will be left behind. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for scheduling this hearing today. I 

look forward to working with you and Chairman Cox to ensure that 

we accomplish the task that we all agree upon; and that is, we 

must make America safe and secure from terrorist attack. Thank 

you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman for his thoughtful statement. 

I would now call upon the Vice Chairman of this subcommittee, 

the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Weldon. 

Mr. WELDON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will try to make it 

brief and just congratulate both sides for putting in place legislation that addresses an issue that this country avoided and ignored 

for the first 225 years of our country’s existence, and that is our 

domestic defenders, our first responders. 

Both pieces of legislation have good points and have areas that 

we can focus on. I am particularly pleased with the Chairman’s 

mark. Both pieces of legislation specifically exempt the assistance 

to firefighters grant program which was a strongly bipartisan effort. Mr. Pascrell was a major leader on this, as were a number of 

other members. And this was enacted in the year 2000, before 9/

11, to focus on the support for our first responder community, and 

I would argue it is probably the most successful program ever developed in the history of this Congress. There are no middle people, 

there is no bureaucracy at the State or country level; 32,000 fire 

and EMS departments across the country apply directly on-line 

during a 30-day period in April, and those applications when they 

come in are evaluated by a board of their peers, not by politicians 

in Washington, not by bureaucrats in Washington, but by a peer 

review process of first responders from across America. 

And, remember, 85 percent of those 32,000 organized departments are volunteer, and, as a result of that effort and the funding 
9

put forth in a bipartisan way, in the past 3 years we have been 

able to put $1.1 billion on the streets of almost every American 

city. And we have over 5,000 grants. The first year we had over 

30,000 applications from 20,000 departments. And both pieces of 

legislation see fit to keep that process in place because it is working, and I commend them. 

In the process of putting together what Chairman Cox has said 

is a key priority, we need to make sure that bureaucracies at the 

State and Federal level, at the State and county, while coordinating, are not taking away precious dollars that should be going 

down to the first responders, the group that has to respond to these 

incidents to make sure that we are not building dynasties in our 

State capitol buildings or our county courthouses, but rather getting the money down to where the need really is. 

The second thing I want to commend about the bills is there a 

focus on each on the number one issue for our first responder. The 

number one issue is a totally inoperable communications system 

domestically. We have none. This is not new after 9/11. Every disaster that I have been on in the past 17 years, communication has 

been the number one problem. Chief Mars in Oklahoma City identified it in the Murrah Building bombing; Fire Commissioner Safir 

in New York identified it in 1993; and we have given lip service 

to that problem up until now. We have to deal with the ability of 

our first responder groups to talk to each other when an incident 

occurs. And that doesn’t just mean money for equipment. It also 

means dealing with the issue of frequency spectrum allocation. 

Now, we tried to get this committee to deal with the Hero Act, 

which is a bipartisan bill that commits Congress to make available 

the 20 megahertz frequency spectrum to public safety needs. But 

the Energy and Commerce Committee has exerted its influence. 

Even though Chairman Cox has said he would work with us to do 

it, they said they would raise an exception and would block the 

process of this committee in dealing with this. 

But the fact that we talk about it in both bills is very important 

to the first responder. The only area, Mr. Chairman, I think that 

I want to see us focus on is a new program that is about to come 

out of the Armed Services mark conference report which I hope will 

be on the floor next week or the week after. Again, with bipartisan 

support, there is a brand-new $7.6 billion program over 7 years to 

fund the hiring of police or firefighters and paramedics in cities 

across America. The key question for us—and this new program 

has strong bipartisan support and has passed with no objections in 

either the House or the Senate and will be a part of the final 

mark—is how this program will be administered and whether or 

not it will come under the legislation brought before us by both 

sides today. 

It is a vitally important program, and I would hope that as we 

develop this legislation we can find a way again to come together 

for the best interests of our firefighters and our paramedics and 

our police officers. 

So I want to thank both sides. I want to thank my distinguished 

Chairman for working with us in crafting this bill. I can tell you 

all the fire service groups are happy that the approach you have 

taken has been inclusive. 
10

And I want to thank Mr. Turner who has a track record of also 

working very aggressively on his side with the national fire and 

EMS groups around the country. 

Thank you, and I look forward to working with you as the bill 

unfolds. 

Mr. SHADEGG. The Chair would now call upon the gentleman 

from Kentucky, based on the order of arrival, Mr. Lucas, for an 

opening statement. 

The Chair would call upon the gentleman from Nevada. 

Mr. GIBBONS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I will associate 

myself with my colleague and friend from Pennsylvania and his remarks, submit my opening statement for the record, and hopefully 

get to the witnesses soon. Thank you. 

Mr. SHADEGG. The Chair would first ask unanimous consent for 

Ms. Dunn and Mr. Frank to participate in today’s subcommittee 

hearing. Without objection, so ordered. 

Then I will call upon the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. 

Frank, for his opening statement. 

Mr. FRANK. And thank you for the double courtesy, Mr. Chairman. 

I am glad we are here, and I appreciate the Chairman making 

it clear that we are in fact dealing with both bills, that it is a joint 

legislative hearing, and I think that is well. 

Obviously, we are all chagrined, I think, and cannot deny what 

Mayor Garner has said on behalf of the Conference of Mayors, 

mainly that things have not worked as we hoped, that the money 

hasn’t gotten to where it needs to get. And I think there is a genuine willingness to work together on this. We have this continued 

State-versus-city problem, and I am very much aware of that because at the last hearing of the committee that I was able to attend, the Governor of Massachusetts defended the notion that the 

money should all continue to go through the States. And I think 

in the face of the evidence, that becomes much harder to defend. 

It is important to get the money out there and get it to the communities. And that is the only other point I wanted to stress. 

I want to make explicit something which we have all taken for 

granted. We are talking about money. We have apparently agreement that what we need to do to deal with this threat is to tax people and then take the money that we get in taxes and send it to 

the local governments. I know there are volunteer fire departments, but they don’t cover the whole country. There aren’t that 

many volunteer police departments. That is, we are talking here 

about the use of Federal tax money. We are talking about money 

that is collected through the Federal tax system and then sent to 

local communities. And I say that, because we have I think in this 

country a disconnect. Everybody hates taxes, and it is always popular with a lot of people to talk about cutting them. Most of the 

same people who dislike taxes are quite fond of them once they are 

collected and distributed. 

And the attitude here reminds me of what was once explained 

to me by a politician in Boston in 1978 when I complained about 

what I thought was an inconsistency. Everybody wants to go to 

heaven, but nobody wants to die. People want to enjoy the fruits, 

but they don’t want to go through the process. 
11

That doesn’t speak for any level of taxation or not, but it does 

for my people. That is what we talking about, tax dollars. And we 

have this particular problem, because as we have been trying to increase Federal funding to police and fire and emergency personnel 

and others—and of course there are other people on city payrolls—

if you have explosions, if you have disruption, the public works people have to get involved. The people have to get out there and repair and fix things. 

The problem has been that because of national fiscal trends, the 

basic police and fire and other services have in many cases been 

subject to a loss of revenue. And it does not make sense on the one 

hand to see police and fire and other departments eroded in terms 

of their number of people by general fiscal problems that the States 

and cities are having, that the States are having and then pushed 

on the cities, and then say, oh, but look what we are doing on the 

other end. 

There are not in my experience in any local or police or fire department people who deal with the terrorism threat and people 

who deal with the other parts of it. The police and fire departments 

are seamless; they all work together. And if you have a police department or a fire department that is reduced in personnel because 

of a general fiscal crisis and a lack of tax revenues sufficient to 

support them, you cannot make up for that by a program that talks 

only about emergencies. 

That is particularly the case, because I know in the Chairman’s 

bill, for example, there is a specific prohibition against using these 

Federal funds to replace the local funds. And, frankly, if the local 

funds are being cut and you get new Federal funds, I wouldn’t 

want to be the one to charge you with enforcing that. I don’t know 

how you would possibly do it. But it does, I think, undermine the 

general principle. 

There are, if we are to live the kind of lives we want to live in 

this country, absolutely essential needs that the private sector will 

not meet because it is not supposed to meet them. The private sector has its job to do, which is to generate wealth in the private sector. It is not charged with police and fire and public safety in general. We can only do those if we come together and have sufficient 

revenues through the tax system and provide them. And I think 

this is a reminder of them. 

And, yes, we have now before us two bills, both of which seem 

to me to say we need to send more tax money for the Federal level 

to the local people to do this essential job. I am all in favor of that, 

but I think it has to be set in context. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHADEGG. Mrs. Dunn would be next. Apparently she has had 

to leave us momentarily, so I would call on the gentleman from 

North Carolina, Mr. Etheridge. 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Chairman, I will forego my statement and 

insert it in the record. 

Mr. SHADEGG. Thank you very much. 

The Chair would then call on the gentleman from Connecticut, 

Mr. Shays. 

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, you holding 

this hearing. In my capacity in the Government Reform Committee 
12

as chairman of the National Security Subcommittee, we have had 

a number of hearings on the whole concept of standards and how 

we allocate resources to our first responders. In response to the foreign affairs organization that hired Senator Rudman to look at how 

we were allocating resources, we put in the bill that said in 9 

months we want standards. We want standards to know how we 

allocate resources. And we tried and we made it bipartisan with 

other members of the committee. 

I think it is absolutely essential that we not give out money before we know why we are giving out money and why they need it. 

And I hope in the process—I know Mr. Turner has introduced a bill 

that includes much more than we did—we include some of the requirements, we include getting the standards and doing it quick. 

And we have been doing this for a year. This is nothing new. I 

mean, we have been trying to determine what standards we should 

set up. So it is not like we are starting from Ground Zero. 

I hope our legislation will be looked at as well and incorporated 

in, obviously, a much more comprehensive piece. We need standards. We need it now. Otherwise, we are giving out money to people who don’t need it and we are not giving money to people who 

do need it. 

Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman for his opening statement. 

The Chair would next call on the gentleman from New Jersey, 

Mr. Pascrell. 

Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Chairman, I want to go back to something that the gentleman from Pennsylvania started to talk about, because I think it 

is important here. When we put the Fire Act together—and we 

were very careful to wait until we reviewed every line, myself and 

Curt, Mr. Weldon, Mr. Andrews, Mr. Hoyer—we made sure that 

folks understood that that legislation and the legislation that we 

would put forth was in response to the basic needs of fire departments throughout the United States of America. The bill was put 

together 2 years before 9/11, as Mr. Weldon pointed out. The four 

of us struggled to get folks on the bill. And when we finally moved 

forward on it, when firefighters came to this great city, knocked on 

doors, we wound up with 285 signatures on the legislation. It was 

totally bipartisan, the entire political spectrum. No party had privy 

to have virtue. 

And I think it is important to understand that there were defined basic needs in the community, and that the firefighters and 

the emergency workers in this country had always been the forgotten part of the public safety equation, and they would no longer be. 

This comprehensive bill was in response to that, it has been a tremendous success, And the peer review has worked. There are many 

who doubted that it would. 

I trust the greatest consultants in the world, and they are the 

firefighters and EMTs. I don’t know of any consultants that we 

hired—do you, Curt? And we listened to them throughout this Nation to discern what were their basic needs. And now we are going 

to take the second step, not in this legislation, in terms of personnel. 

So we have come a long way, and there are many—there has 

been a tremendous amount of distribution of need, response to 
13

need. But we made very, very certain that the money would go directly to the communities. No one, no one would be able to take 

anything off the top. I don’t know any other way to say it, Mr. 

Chairman, and it has been successful for small communities and 

towns out in the middle of Montana. And I thought things were 

bad in the suburbs and the cities, and we found towns that didn’t 

have a fire truck, or if they had one, had to push it to the fire. A 

very sad statement to make. Again, our first responders and our 

first-to-leave tragic situations. 

I think that both of these, each of these pieces of legislation can 

be melded together. I don’t see why not. There are two or three 

things in each of them that I think stands out. The Cox legislation 

particularly makes it very clear that this would not impact on five 

major grant programs that we have voted upon, mainly—you know, 

not only fire grants, but the COPS program. You know, here we are 

talking about getting ready for emergencies, and we are standing 

by watching the COPS program disintegrate in front of our eyes, 

a successful program that has led to the decrease in crime throughout the United States of America since 1992, 1993. 

I think it is important that we preserve those programs and that 

we not meld what we are talking about today with what already 

exists, the Fire Act. 

Having said that, I think that we need to work on how this 

would be distributed and on what standards they would be distributed. And as Mr. Shays has mentioned, I think it is important, and 

I think the gentleman from Massachusetts has made it clear that 

this is our responsibility in oversight, much more than the States. 

The Federal Government has to respond. We are primarily entrusted with the responsibility of responding to emergency situations, and we will help the communities out in that regard. 

I think that we must work out a compromise, particularly in the 

area of who are the winners and losers, or whether we will respond 

more effectively to those communities who are at greater risk. I 

think that is something that needs to be worked out so that we 

don’t go to the other extreme of a universal plan that will provide 

dollars for emergency response where there is no need. I think we 

need to be very, very careful along those lines. 

Forty-five percent of our firefighters lack standard portable radios. Now, is that with regard to terrorism? Absolutely not. That 

situation existed before 9/11. They now have the bands to communicate. Now, what are we doing here? It is 2 years-plus since 9/11, 

and our firefighters do not have the ability to communicate, and we 

will string this out for months and months and months in order to 

respond on the terrorist issue. It doesn’t make sense. Over 10,000 

fire engines in this country are over 30 years of age. And if you 

think I was kidding when I said some of them had to be pushed 

to the fire, I wasn’t kidding. 

This is serious. But these are basic needs. These are basic needs 

beyond what we find ourselves in. And the world has changed in 

the last 2 years. We are expecting them to do even more with the 

little they have, and that is why the work of this committee is so 

critical, Mr. Chairman. 

I really appreciate the fact that you have brought these up. We 

are ready to act, we are ready to move, and I don’t think we should 
14

hesitate too long, as long as we know, as long as we have objectives, as long as we have standards, as long as we can work out 

where we will send this money, whether it be direct or through 

some other entity. 

And I think the task force which Mr. Turner has suggested to 

oversight—I mean, that really will guarantee the first responders 

input so that they are not left on the sidelines; the task force, I 

think as you call it, I think that is important. 

I see no contradiction in these two pieces of legislation, and I 

look forward, Mr. Chairman, to their melding together and getting 

something done. Thank you. 

Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman. 

I would now call on the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Cardin, 

for his opening statement. 

Mr. CARDIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Let me just point out that we are very fortunate in this country 

to have the career, volunteer firemen, our police, our first responders. That certainly became evident to all of us after 9/11. We have 

a network in place of first responders, and they have carried on 

very well for our communities. 9/11 really tested their capacity to 

carry on their traditional roles as well as take on a new responsibility for homeland security. 

It has become clear to me—and I think this hearing is very important for us to try to bring some consensus among all of us as 

to what the Federal role should be in funding and helping our first 

responders. It became clear to me that we first have to provide adequate resources. 

Now, I have met with my local government officials on several, 

many occasions since 9/11, and one thing that is clear to me is that 

we need to do a better job. I agree with my colleagues that it is 

a Federal responsibility on homeland security. Every time we 

change the threat level on the coding system, it costs our local governments money. It is more overtime. It is more the use of our 

equipment. And there is a cost associated with that, and yet that 

cost is borne locally, not through the use of Federal resources. I 

think we need to take a look at that. 

I agree with my colleagues that I think the two bills that are before us offer a lot of similarity, and I hope that we will be able to 

work out the differences here. I do think our funding formula needs 

to be sensitive to risk. I agree with Chairman Cox in that regard. 

Communities have different risk levels, and that needs to be sensitive in the funding formulas that we use. However, I would hope 

that we would have predictable funding to our local governments. 

I don’t think we should just do it on competitive grants. I think it 

has to be a predictable funding source that takes into consideration 

the risk levels of the different communities around the Nation. 

And then I do think we need to work out this problem between 

our State and local governments. I have met many times with my 

State government and with my local governments, and I have 

heard every complaint about it is a long time getting the money 

through, et cetera, et cetera. And then I meet with the State and 

they go through the process with me. 

And I must tell you, in Maryland, our Governor is not opposed 

to the money going directly to the local governments if that will 
15

provide additional resources and help to our local governments. 

And so I think that we should be able to figure out a way that we 

can accomplish this in a way that we get the money as quickly as 

possible to the people who need it, to the units that need it, without the competition factor and worrying about who controls the 

money. We need to do a better job in all that. 

And I think this hearing provides the framework for us to come 

together as a committee. There has clearly been an interest in this 

Congress among Democrats and Republicans to support our first 

responders and to do it in the most effective way. We are willing 

to use the resources that are necessary, and I hope that this hearing will help us achieve those goals. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman. 

Before we move to our panel of witnesses, I want to recognize a 

group of students we have here. I think we have some 40 students 

from Drexel University along with their professor, Roy Kim. So 

welcome. We appreciate your being here. We think it is an interesting hearing for you to be able to attend. 

Let me begin by introducing two members of our panel, and I am 

going to ask the Ranking Member if you would introduce the third. 

Our first witness is the Honorable James Garner, Mayor of the Village of Hempstead, New York, and the current president of the 

U.S. conference of Mayors. 

Our second witness is Colonel Randall Larsen, CEO of Homeland 

Security Associates, and former Director of the Institute of Homeland Security. Thank you for being here. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Well, I am happy to introduce Robert Latham, 

who is our Mississippi Emergency Management Agency Director. 

And on a scale of 1 to 50, in my book he is number one. Glad to 

have you. 

Mr. SHADEGG. We appreciate all of your being here. Your statements will be inserted in the record in their complete version, and 

we would appreciate it if you would summarize your testimony and 

try to squeeze it into the 5 minutes that the clock will allow you. 

But we are not going to be real firm with that gavel. We want to 

hear what you have to say. It is our job to learn from you here 

today. So thank you for being here. 

Mr. SHADEGG. And, Mayor Garner, would you like to begin? 

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JAMES A. GARNER, MAYOR 

OF HEMPSTEAD, NEW YORK PRESIDENT, THE UNITED 

STATES CONFERENCE OF MAYORS 

Mr. GARNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good evening. My name 

is James A. Garner, and I am the Mayor of Hempstead, New York, 

and the 61st president of the United States Conference of Mayors. 

I want to thank Chairman Shadegg, Ranking Member Thompson, and the members of the subcommittee for this opportunity to 

testify on H.R. 3266, Faster and Smarter Funding for First Responders Act. 

One month after September 11th, the Conference of Mayors 

sponsored an emergency summit with more than 200 mayors, police chiefs, fire chiefs, and emergency managers at which we developed a national action plan. One of the key recommendations was 
16

for a first responders block grant containing direct funding to help 

prevent and respond to any attack on our cities. But cities have not 

sat back and waited for Federal assistance before working to secure 

our homeland. Our national surveys have shown that cities spent 

billions of dollars after 9/11 on equipment, training, and overtime, 

numbers which increased during the war and periods of high alert. 

We also strengthened our regional partnerships and mutual aid 

agreements, which is currently the case in Nassau County where 

I live. 

Mayors appreciate that Congress and the administration are now 

providing significant funding intended to help first responders. 

However, as we stated, when the program was first proposed, we 

believed that monies intended for local first responders should not 

be provided through the States. We were concerned that the funding would not reach first responders in a timely fashion, or be provided in a manner that promotes prevention as well as response. 

Unfortunately, we are finding this to be the case. On October the 

17th, the Conference of Mayors released a new survey tracking 

homeland security funds sent to the 50 States. The analysis surveyed 168 cities of all sizes, with at least one city in every State. 

We found that over half of the cities have either not been consulted 

or have had no opportunity to influence State decisionmaking 

about how to use and distribute fundings. The survey also found 

that 80 to 90 percent of cities had not received funds from the 

country’s largest Federal homeland Security program, the State 

block grant. 

I would ask that this survey be inserted into the record. Mr. 

Chairman, I have a survey here it is entitled ‘‘168 Cities Out of 50 

States,’’ September 2003. 

Mr. SHADEGG. Without objection, so ordered. 

[The information follows:]

A Copy of the Report entitled ‘‘The United states Conference of Mayors Homeland Security Monitoring Center FIRST MAYORS’ REPORT TO THE NATION: 

Tracking Federal Homeland Security Funds Sent to the 50 State Governments 

A 168 City/50-State Survey’’ September 2003. Is maintained in the Committee 

files.

Mr. GARNER. We note that while the law requires that States 

suballocate 80 percent of the funding to local government, once 

that funding is sent to counties or regional governments—which is 

often the case—the deadlines end and there is no further time requirement on getting funds to cities. 

We also hear that some States may be planning to purchase 

equipment they think local government needs and send it to them 

without input. 

We appreciate that Chairman Cox shared our concern that funding be provided to communities at risk, and that it not be stalled 

at the State level. One of the recommendations that emerged from 

our homeland security task force was that if States failed to meet 

deadlines, the Department of Homeland Security should be required to develop an appeal system to get funds directly to cities. 

We are pleased that the Department of Homeland Security has 

taken administrative steps to make sure that deadlines are met. 

We are very pleased that such a provision is contained in H.R. 

3266 and urge that the requirement be made Federal law. 
17

We also appreciate the support in the bill for existing law and 

for the partnership programs such as COPS, local law enforcement 

block grants, and fire grants. We also ask that continued support 

be provided for the high-threat urban security grant program that 

has been successful in moving funds to cities and fostering regional 

cooperation. While H.R. 3266 does not contain direct funding for 

cities, as we continue to call for, we recognize the efforts to move 

the funding more locally by allowing regions to apply for assistance. 

As this subcommittee moves forward with this proposal, we 

would like to raise several issues: 

First, it is not clear to us how a region would be defined and to 

what extent individual cities would have a say in this process. We 

would be very concerned if regional authorities would have the 

ability to apply for funding on behalf of cities without their consent 

or engagement in the process. 

Second, we are not clear on what the requirements would be for 

the Department of Homeland Security to approve regional applications, or instead continue to send funding through the States. 

Third, we recommend that an increased focus be placed on terrorism prevention. To do this, there simply must be funding provided for overtime assistance at times of high alert or special local 

concerns and for training. 

There is no equivalent for more officers on the street engaging 

with the community to provide local intelligence and to prevent attacks. 

I also want to comment on H.R. 3158, the Preparer Act, introduced by Representative Turner and other members of Congress. 

We appreciate that this bill works to develop standards based on 

threats and vulnerability assessments, foster statewide planning 

with local input, and provide for personal reimbursement during 

elevated threat levels. However, we remain concerned about the 

lack of direct funding and lack of pass-through guarantees. 

We are also concerned that the planning process contained in the 

bill at both Federal and State levels could further delay funding 

from reaching first responders. 

To conclude, Mr. Chairman, let me make two points. 

Mayors believe that without some kind of predictable direct funding, rather than year-by-year decisions made at the State level, it 

will be difficult to budget for long-term homeland security activities 

at the local level. After all, equipment must be maintained, training must be continually enhanced, and vulnerable infrastructure 

and public events must be secured, especially during heightened 

alerts. 

We also request work with the Department of Homeland Security 

to closely monitor how first responder funding is currently following through to the States. We would urge that the Department 

of Homeland Security and the States be required to provide very 

detailed information as to exactly which local governments have received pass-through fundings and for what. 

I want to thank the subcommittee for this opportunity to testify 

on behalf of the U.S. conference of Mayors, and we look forward to 

working with you as together we strengthen our Nation’s homeland 

defense. Again, I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman. 
18

Mr. SHADEGG. I thank for your testimony. 

[The statement of Mr. Garner follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JAMES A. GARNER, MAYOR OF HEMPSTEAD, NEW YORK, 

PRESIDENT, THE UNITED STATES CONFERENCE OF MAYERS

Good afternoon. My name is James A. Gamer. I am the Mayor of Hempstead, New 

York and the 6151 President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. 

I want to thank Chairman Shadegg, Ranking Member Thompson and the members of the Subcommittee for this opportunity to testify on HR 3266, the ‘‘Faster and 

Smarter Funding for First Responders Act.’’

One month after September 11, the Conference of Mayors sponsored an Emergency Summit with more than 200 mayors, police chiefs, fire chiefs and emergency 

managers at which we developed a National Action Plan. 

One of the key recommendations was for a first responder block grant containing 

direct funding to help prevent and respond to any attacks on our cities. 

But cities have not sat back and waited for federal assistance before working to 

secure our homeland. 

Our national surveys have shown that cities spent billions of dollars after 9–11 

on equipment, training and overtime, numbers which increased during the war and 

periods of high alert. 

We also strengthened our regional partnerships and mutual aid agreements, 

which is certainly the case in Nassau County where I live. . 

Mayors appreciate that Congress and the Administration are now providing significant funding intended to help first responders. 

However; as we stated when the program was first proposed, we believe that 

money intended for local first responders should not be provided through the states. 

We were concerned that the funding would not reach first responders in a timely 

fashion, or be provided in a manner that promotes prevention as well as response. 

Unfortunately, we are finding this to be the case. 

On October 17, the Conference of Mayors released a new survey tracking homeland security funds sent to the 50 states. The analysis surveyed 168 cities of all 

sizes, with at least one city in every state. 

We found that over half of the cities have either not been consulted or have had 

no opportunity to influence state decision-making about how to use and distribute 

funding. 

The survey also found that 80 to 90 percent of cities had not received funds from 

the country’s largest federal homeland security program—the state block grant. 

I would ask that this survey be made a part of the record. 

We note that while the law requires that states sub-allocate 80 percent of the 

funding to local governments, once that funding is sent to county or regional governments—which is often the case—the deadlines end and there is no further time requirements on getting funds to cities. 

We are also hearing that some states may be planning to purchase equipment 

they think local governments need, and send it to them without input. 

We appreciate that Chairman Cox shares our concern that funding be provided 

to communities at risk and that it not be stalled at the state level. 

One of the recommendations that emerged from our Homeland Security Task 

Force was that if states fail to meet deadlines, the Department of Homeland Security should be required to develop an appeals system to get funds directly to cities. 

Weare very pleased that such a provision is contained in HR 3266, and urge that 

the requirement be made mandatory. 

We also appreciate the support in the bill for existing law enforcement partnership programs such as COPS, Local Law Enforcement Block Grants, and Fire 

Grants. 

We would also ask that continued support be provided for the high-threat urban 

security grant program that has been successful in moving funding to cities and fostering regional cooperation. 

While HR 3266 does not contain direct funding for cities—as we continue to call 

for—we recognize the effort to move the funding more locally by allowing regions 

to apply for assistance. 

As this Subcommittee moves forward with this proposal, we would like to raise 

several issues. 

First, it is not clear to us how a region would be defined, and to what extent individual cities would have a say in this process. We would be very concerned if regional authorities would have the ability to apply for funding on behalf of cities 

without their consent or engagement in the process. 
19

Second, we are not clear on what the requirements would be for the Department 

of Homeland Security to approve regional applications, or instead continue to send 

funding through the states. 

Third, we recommend that an increased focus be placed on terrorism prevention. 

To do this, there simply must be funding provided for overtime assistance at times 

of higher alerts, for specific local concerns, and for training. 

There is no equivalent for more officers on the streets engaging with the community to provide local intelligence and prevent attacks. 

I also want to comment on HR 3158, the PREP ARE Act, introduced by Representative Turner and other Members of Congress. 

We appreciate that this bill works to develop standards based on threat and vulnerability assessments, foster state-wide planning with local input, and provide for 

personnel reimbursement during elevated threat levels. 

However, we remain concerned about that lack of direct funding and lack of passthrough guarantees. 

Weare also concerned that the planning processes contained in the bill at both the 

federal and state levels could further delay funding from reaching first responders. 

To conclude, let me make two points. 

Mayors believe that without some kind of predictable, direct funding—rather than 

year-by-year decisions made at the state level—it will be difficult to budget for longterm homeland security activities at the local level. 

After all, equipment must be maintained, training must be continually enhanced, 

and vulnerable infrastructure and public events must be secured—especially during 

heightened alerts. 

We also request that Congress work with the Department of Homeland Security 

to closely monitor how first responder funding is currently flowing through the 

states. 

We would urge that DHS and the states be required to provide very detailed information as to exactly which local governments have received pass-through funding, and for what. 

I want to thank the Subcommittee for this opportunity to testify on behalf of the 

U.S. Conference of Mayors, and we look forward to working with you as together, 

we strengthen our nation’s homeland defense.

Mr. SHADEGG. Colonel Larsen. 

STATEMENT OF COLONEL RANDY LARSEN , USAF (RETIRED), 

FOUNDER AND CEO, HOMELAND SECURITY ASSOCIATES 

Colonel LARSEN. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Thompson, Mr. Turner, and 

Chairman Cox, thank you for this. I was asked here today to comment specifically on H.R. 3266, and so my remarks will be limited 

to that. 

The framework I used for analysis of this bill is one that I frequently use when asked by Congress, administration, or members 

of the press or the general public about any sort of homeland security legislation program or even commercial products. I ask three 

questions, and I suggest you use the same standard here: Will this 

make my family more secure? Can America afford it? And, what 

will it do to my civil liberties? 

Well, I looked at this legislation from various perspectives also, 

as someone who has spent the last 10 years studying homeland security, as a taxpayer, as the CEO of a corporation, and as a father. 

I am pleased to report from all perspectives I give H.R. 3266 a positive response to those three questions. Certainly it is not a panacea 

to this complex challenge, but it is a step in the right direction. 

But I do have some points I would like to make. 

First of all, the legislation calls for grants based on threats determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security rather than on population size, or what I call politics as usual. I have worked with Representative Shays on this issue long before 9/11. It is the right 

thing to do, but certainly difficult. As has already been noted here, 
20

we were designed as a free and open society, and to use terminology I used as an Air Force pilot, America is, unfortunately, a 

target-rich environment. 

The Under Secretary for Information Analysis and Infrastructure 

Protection in DHS will require your support. And this will require 

courage on your part, because when he has to make tough decisions 

about facilities that are not in your particular district, you will 

need to support those decisions. 

All Americans, whether you are a Member of Congress, the administration, Governors, State legislators, county executives, mayors, and citizens, we must learn to think nationally and regionally, 

not just parochially, about defending our homeland. 

I used to sit in this room in uniform. You know, it was far easier 

when securing America meant buying another nuclear-powered aircraft carrier; because, Mr. Chairman, that nuclear-powered aircraft 

carrier protected Cave Creek, Arizona as much as it did Boston, 

Massachusetts. But when we buy equipment for Cave Creek, Arizona, it does nothing for the citizens of Boston or New York or 

Washington. It is a more difficult challenge. 

Second, that is why we have to establish priorities. We just cannot afford to do everyone. I am sure we will get Boston and Cave 

Creek, I understand. 

Second, the legislation addresses the issue of prioritization. 

Colonel LARSEN. Since November of 2001, I have repeatedly stated to Congress and the administration that the greatest threat to 

the American homeland is not nuclear weapons or biological weapons or chemical weapons or large conventional explosives or cyber 

weapons. The greatest threat, in my opinion, is uncontrolled spending. We cannot afford to provide every first responder with every 

piece of equipment or every training program on their wish list. I 

was asked—I am a member of the Council of Foreign Relations—

and I was asked to be on that most recent study. I disagreed with 

their methodology that they approached with it, which is why I did 

not participate. I liked Hart-Rudman 5 study that was sponsored 

by the Council on Foreign Relations, but not the most recent one. 

America cannot afford a chemical detector in every government 

building or piece of critical infrastructure. We cannot afford to 

guard every facility in this country the same way we do this Nation’s Capitol. We must establish priority. And I agree with the priorities that were listed in 3266, significant loss of life, risk of large 

scale denial of human means of subsistence and risk of massive 

disruption of one or more sectors of our economy. I have spent a 

lot of time in the last 2-1/2 years working on those last two, when 

we did exercises such as Dark Winter where Senator Nunn played 

the President, and other participants included: Jim Woolsey, Bill 

Sessions former FBI director, Governor Frank Keating of Oklahoma. We looked at a small pox attack and what it would do, and 

you know what the greatest damage was, it was the disruption of 

our economy. We did one—I have been doing the last 2 years working with Jim Moseley, the Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, and 

Claude Allen, the Deputy Secretary of HHS, about attacks on our 

food supply. One thing this committee and subcommittee needs to 

be careful about is not preparing for the last war. 
21

I used to be chairman of the military department at the National 

War College, and that was one of my concerns, we were preparing 

our students to fight Desert Storm again. All I have heard today 

for first responders is EMT, fire and police. They are all important. 

But I tell you, if you look at where al Qaeda will attack our economy and our food supply, there is a lot of first responders out there 

that I haven’t heard mentioned today that are very important, and 

those traditional first responders doing nontraditional roles. 

I do a lot of executive seminars for the Sheriff’s Association of 

Washington State, the Sheriff’s Association of Illinois, new things 

that sheriffs and police chiefs would have to do that are not part 

of traditional police work, and in some cases firefighter work. But 

the most difficult one though that I think that you owe to Secretary 

Ridge is defining what significant loss of life means. Now a lot of 

these young folks back here behind us don’t remember this. I know 

everyone on the panel up there does. Back during the Vietnam 

War, I was a 19-year-old kid in Vietnam, and I used to read Stars 

and Stripes and my mom read at home ‘‘the casualties this week 

in the central highlands were light.’’ You know, that had a different 

perspective for the families who were connected to those light casualties. 

What is it? Significant loss of casualties. What does that mean 

to Secretary Ridge and what does that mean to governors? In 2001, 

we had 3,000 Americans die from terrorism. We would probably all 

say that was significant. In 2001, we had 5,000 Americans die of 

food poisoning. Did we have any hearings up here? We had 35,000 

die in automobile accidents. We had 90,000 die from improper medical procedures. In the summer of 2001, just before 9/11, a study 

was released that said if all drivers and passengers of automobiles 

wore NASCAR style helmets we could reduce fatalities in the 

United States by 40 percent. 

So I am sitting here right now and telling this panel how you 

could save 15,000 lives next year. Is that not a significant number? 

But I don’t think that we are going to pass that legislation. But 

what I am telling you is what does it mean? It is a great term. 

Those are the right priorities, but I think we need to have a discussion on what significant loss of life means. 

Now I don’t know how many have been down to Oklahoma City 

to the memorial. You know you walk into a small room and they 

have the table sitting there where right across the street they had 

the water board meeting and the water commissioner of Oklahoma 

started the meeting right on time at 9 o’clock. And at 9:02 you hear 

the horrible explosion and people screaming and then that room 

goes completely dark and there are 168 photographs that come up 

on the wall. Now I tell you in Oklahoma City, that is significant. 

But is it 168? Is it 3,000? Is it five? We lost five to inhalation anthrax and spent $5 billion on biodefense. It is a discussion you need 

to have and it is something you owe Secretary Ridge. 

Third, and something I really like in this bill is it prohibits supplantation. I know, Mr. Frank, you made a comment that you 

didn’t particularly like that. But I tell you from the homeland security perspective and as a taxpayer, I applaud you for putting this 

in there. As a realist and an observer of how the system works, I 

guarantee you you need more than one sentence and one bill to fix 
22

this problem. If you would like a real eye opener about how serious 

supplantation is, I recommend you talk to Dr. Ellen Gursky from 

the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security. Dr. Gursky recently 

finished a study funded by the Century Foundation that examines 

the issue. The report will be released later this month. 

You will find it shocking to see how good intentions, good ideas 

and significant sums of money that come from this Congress get 

distorted, disrupted and diverted to the State level. Supplantation 

is an issue that deserves its own bill and something that must be 

corrected if we are going to see improvement in homeland security. 

The flexibility that H.R. 3266 gives to the Secretary of Homeland 

Security is very important, and I applaud your insight and flexibility. 

And one last thing here. Regional funding, I think it is the most 

important part of this bill. We cannot provide all the equipment 

and training needed for every fire house, police department and 

emergency room that is on their current wish list. But if a major 

attack occurs in Washington, D.C., local leaders and first responders must be prepared to accept major assistance from surrounding 

communities and States. And to do this effectively, we must conduct regional exercises and training. And I think the only way that 

will happen is with Federal funds. We cannot be exchanging business cards on the first day of a crisis. And unfortunately that is 

what would happen in many regions today. Thank you for the time. 

Mr. SHADEGG. Thank you for your testimony. 

[The statement of Colonel Randall Larsen follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF COLONEL RANDALL J. LARSEN, 

Mr. Chairman, distinguished members, thank you for allowing me the opportunity 

to provide my comments on H.R. 3266, Faster and Smarter Funding for First Responders.

I am frequently asked by Members of Congress, the Administration, members of 

the press, and the general public to assess homeland security legislation, programs 

and commercial products. I always begin by asking three questions: 

Will this make my family more secure? 

Can America afford it? 

What will it do to my civil liberties? 

From the various perspectives of someone who has spent the past ten years studying the field of homeland security, as a taxpayer, as a corporate CEO, and as a father, I am pleased to report that H.R. 3266 receives a positive response to all three 

questions. While not a panacea to this incredibly complex and difficult challenge, 

this bill is a step in the right direction. 

First of all, this legislation calls for grants based on threats as determined by the 

Secretary of Homeland Security, rather than on population size or ‘‘politics as 

usual.’’ This is an issue that Representative Shays has advocated for several years. 

It is clearly the right thing to do, but will be a Herculean challenge. America was 

designed to be an open and free society. From a terrorist’s perspective, this makes 

our homeland a target rich environment. The Under Secretary for Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection will require your support, particularly when 

tough decisions are made. Not every facility in every congressional district will 

make the list. 

All Americans—Members of Congress, the Administration, Governors, State Legislators, Mayors, County Executives, and citizens--must learn to think nationally not 

just parochially about defending our homeland. It was far easier when securing 

America meant buying another aircraft carrier. An aircraft carrier protected the 

people of Cave Creek Arizona as much as it did the citizens of New York City. The 

same will not be true for all homeland security equipment and training programs 

provided to local governments. 

Second, it addresses the issue of prioritization. Since November 2001, I have repeatedly stated to Congress and the Administration that the greatest threat to the 

American homeland is not nuclear weapons, biological weapons, chemical weapons, 
23

large conventional explosives or cyber weapons. The greatest threat we will face in 

the years ahead is uncontrolled spending. America cannot afford to provide every 

first responder with every piece of equipment or every training program on their 

wish lists. America cannot afford a chemical detector in every government building 

or piece of critical infrastructure. America cannot guard every key facility in the 

manner that the nation’s capitol is currently protected. We must establish priorities 

and they must be based upon the three factors listed in this legislation: risk of significant loss of life, risk of large-scale denial of the means of human subsistence, 

and risk of massive disruption to one or more sectors of our economy. 

The most difficult task will be to define significant loss of life. During the Vietnam 

War, the government would report, ‘‘the casualties this week in the central highlands were light,’’ but we all knew that the families of those deceased soldiers had 

a different perspective on the term ‘‘light’’. 

America lost nearly 3,000 innocent civilians to terrorism in 2001. On the other 

hand, America lost 5,000 citizens that year to food poisoning, 35,000 in automobile 

accidents and more than 90,000 to improper medical procedures. In the summer of 

2001, a study reported that if all drivers and passengers of automobiles wore 

NASCAR quality helmets, fatalities would be reduced by up to 40 percent. In other 

words, if this Congress passed legislation requiring every occupant of every automobile in America to wear helmets, we could save more than 15,000 lives next year. 

Are 15,000 lives not significant? Why hasn’t Congress passed such legislation? How 

will the Secretary of Homeland Security define significant loss of life? You should 

provide him guidance. 

Third, this bill prohibits supplantation. From a homeland security and taxpayer 

perspective, I applaud this section of the bill. As a realist and an observer of how 

the system works, I guarantee you need more than one sentence in one bill to fix 

this problem. For a real eye opener on the seriousness of supplantation, I recommend you talk to Dr. Elin Gursky from the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security. Dr Gursky recently finished a study, funded by the Century Foundation, that 

examines this issue. The report will be released later this month. You will find it 

shocking to see how good ideas, intentions, and significant sums of money that come 

from this Congress get distorted, disrupted and diverted at the state level. Supplantation is an issue that deserves its own bill. It is something that must be corrected 

before we can see significant improvement in homeland security. 

Fourth, and somewhat related to issue three, is the bill’s requirement to push 

down ‘‘not less than 80 percent’’ of grant funds to local governments and first responders. This has been a problem I hear about frequently in my visits to those on 

the front lines of homeland security, such as police officers, fire fighters, and emergency medical personnel. In particular, I have heard this complaint from the public 

health community in California. I recognize that there is a significant budget crisis 

in that state, but money that is designated for front line troops should not be disproportionately skimmed by state agencies. H.R. 3266 provides penalties for failure 

to pass these funds down to local governments and first responders, but I wonder 

if there is sufficient manpower at the Department of Homeland Security to adequately monitor these grants. 

Fifth, the flexibility provided to the Secretary of Homeland Security to transfer 

all or part of funds to a different project once a grant has been made fits the title 

of Faster and Smarter Funding. I applaud your insight and wisdom in providing 

such flexibility to the Secretary.Homeland security is a rapidly evolving field. I have 

taught graduate courses in Homeland Security since 1999, and find that I must 

make major revisions to my syllabus each semester. Flexibility is critical to success 

in homeland security, whether in the classroom or on the front lines. 

Finally, and in some respects most important, is funding for regional programs. 

America cannot afford to provide every fire house, every police department and 

every hospital emergency room with every piece of equipment and every training 

program on their wish lists. We must learn to leverage regional capability. If a 

major attack occurs in Washington DC, local leaders and first responders must be 

prepared to accept major assistance from surrounding communities and states. To 

do this effectively, we must conduct regional planning, exercises and training. Providing Federal funds for such activities is the best way, and perhaps the only way, 

to ensure that these regional players will not be exchanging business cards on the 

first day of crisis. Federal funding for multi-jurisdictional planning, exercises and 

training is critically important to making America more secure at price we can afford. 

I appreciate the opportunity to comment on H.R. 3266 and look forward to your 

questions.
24

Mr. SHADEGG. I want to express my appreciation for your mentioning Cave Creek Arizona, which is in my district. And in fact, 

you make a good point about how an aircraft carrier protects both 

Cave Creek and the rest of the Nation, but these allocation of resources—. 

Mr. FRANK. If the Chairman would yield, I hope in Cave Creek 

you are not going to be taking those Federal funds and saving on 

your local stuff. 

Mr. SHADEGG. They don’t believe in supplantation in Arizona but 

I have heard it happens in other States. I also want to mention, 

you made a reference to examining our food supply, and my subcommittee indeed has a tentative hearing scheduled on the threat 

to our food supply, because I think you point out there are lots of 

vulnerabilities, and that is one of great concern. Let me turn now 

to Mr. Robert Latham. 

STATEMENT OF ROBERT LATHAM, JR, DIRECTOR, MISSISSIPPI 

EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY 

Mr. LATHAM. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Thompson, Chairman Cox, I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to testify before 

you today and personally thank you on behalf of the citizens of 

Mississippi for what you are doing to help secure our homeland. 

The homeland security effort has required unprecedented cooperation between disciplines and jurisdictions and the building of coalitions and partnerships at every level of government. There will 

never again be a routine call for our first responders. Everyday 

they put their lives on the line. Hundreds paid the ultimate sacrifice on September 11, 2001. Thanks to the efforts of Congress, 

States and communities have received millions of dollars to ensure 

that our emergency responders have the resources that they need. 

I would like to provide you with some issues highlighting some of 

the obstacles the States and local governments are dealing with as 

we build this capability together. 

First the creation of the Department of Homeland Security enabled the Federal Government to consolidate many agencies forcing 

the elimination of turf battles that have existed for decades. There 

are similar challenges at the State and local level, but we are committed to building the relationships that are critical in developing 

the multi-disciplined, multi-jurisdictional capabilities we need. 

Second, the outcome of our efforts will depend upon our ability 

to build comprehensive and integrated plans at the State and local 

level, plans that are based on vulnerabilities, matched with local, 

regional and State capabilities. Every community does not need a 

level A HAZMAT capability, but every community must have a 

basic response capability. In Mississippi, we have taken that approach and are seeing steady, consistent progress. To continue this 

type of success, States must have the lead role where management 

of these initiatives to ensure plan uniformity and integration. 

Third, our ability to share intelligence information must continue 

to be improved. Every member of the law enforcement community 

must have the ability to share real-time information. Fusing this 

information at the appropriate level, analyzing the information and 

using the most current technology for timely distribution of this information with a cop on the street is vital to this effort. Most of 
25

all, we should not forget the role of the average citizen. As a Nation 

we can only be secure when every community in every county in 

every State is secure. 

Last but most importantly, we must sustain this planning and 

capability for the long term. As States, we recognize our role and 

responsibility and are moving rapidly to develop and sustain this 

capability. Securing critical infrastructure and developing a comprehensive response strategy is crucial. It takes States working 

with counties and cities to build this strategy. 

I urge you to continue to provide the resources to the States so 

that we can work with the communities to sustain this effort. However, there are some issues that continue to affect the State and 

local ability to develop and sustain this effort. First I think it is 

important to recognize that ‘‘one size does not fit all.’’ States should 

be allowed the flexibility within DHS guidelines to utilize the funds 

to meet those needs. Things such as; allowing the State administrative agency, designated by the governor, flexibility within DHS 

guidelines; and allowing the State administrative agency to approve local changes to equipment requests as long as they fall within the State strategy and meet ODP guidelines. 

The evolvement of technology, change in vulnerability assessments and improved capability justifies the need for this flexibility. 

Minimize paperwork or on-line requirements for the State administrative agency. Once the application is approved, showing the 80 

percent pass-through or grant distribution plan in our formula, 

ODP should accept, approve and fund the application. In Mississippi, we met the required pass-through deadlines and actually 

exceeded the amount that was required to be passed through to 

local governments. 

Second, coordinate all homeland security grant programs through 

the Federal Government to allow a coordinated implementation by 

the States, counties and the cities. Bioterrorism grants, fire grants 

and others intended to improve the response capability need to be 

concurred with by the State homeland security advisor to ensure 

that all initiatives are supportive of the national and State homeland security strategy and are not repetitive. There is only one 

strategy and all initiatives to support this strategy. 

Third, continue providing planning funds that will enable the 

States to enhance existing, proven, comprehensive, all-hazards 

emergency management plans. So far, planning funds have been 

dedicated to updating vulnerability and capability assessments, the 

State homeland security strategy and response plans for the new 

threat. 

Fourth, track support of first, second and other responders by 

comparing improvements in capability as evidenced in annual reports already required by ODP. Don’t require additional and redundant reports. 

Fifth, remember that development of a capability is only the beginning. Sustainment of that capability will be the challenge. We 

need assurances of the Federal will to fund these initiatives for the 

long-term. We need consistent and predictable funding for equipment replacement and upgrades in training. 

In closing, I would like to address some issues that can make 

homeland security programs more effective. Refine the alert level 
26

warning system by targeting the warnings where possible to a specific infrastructure sector or region of the country. Enhance current 

proven warning systems such as NAWAS and the Emergency Alert 

System to provide timely warning and information to State and 

local governments as well as the general public. Preserve pre–911 

grant programs such as the Emergency Management Performance 

Grant, Fire Grants, COPS grants. These grants provide the funds 

necessary to sustain valuable programs that have proven themselves in our States and our communities. Grants such as EMPG 

are providing the cornerstone for our State and local all-hazards 

capability. 

State and local emergency managers are playing vital roles in 

homeland security efforts to include vulnerability and capability assessments, development of State and local strategies and grant 

management. Loss of this grant will undermine an all-hazards approach to preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation. Those 

are already in place. Our communities will continue to be ravished 

by floods, tornadoes hurricanes and earthquakes. 

An act of terrorism is another risk and threat that has consequences that we must plan for and be prepared to manage. 

Emergency management is the only nondiscipline specific, nonjurisdictional specific element that can and has pulled the various programs and disciplines together in times of crisis. Homeland security should not come at the expense of these other programs. We 

should build on what is already in place. Each and every day, our 

communities become more secure and our emergency responders 

are better prepared. Achieving our goal to make our homeland secure will take time. This is a team effort with a national will to 

succeed. States are committed to being a team player. 

Give us the resources we need to meet the challenge. Don’t tie 

our hands. Give us the flexibility. Hold us accountable, but help us 

do the job we need to do. Ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate this 

opportunity and submit my testimony for the record. 

[The statement of Robert Latham follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ROBERT R. LATHAM, JR. 

‘‘Investing in and Building a National Capability—A State and Local Perspective’’

Chairman Cox, Ranking Member Thompson and Distinguished Committee Members: 

I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today and personally 

thank you on behalf of the citizens of Mississippi. In providing for you a state perspective, I hope I am able to aid you in your efforts to better prepare our nation, 

make our communities safer and provide our citizens with the security that they 

expect and deserve. The homeland security effort has required unprecedented cooperation between disciplines and jurisdictions and the building of coalitions and 

partnerships at every level of government.The result has been the recognition of the 

vast capabilities we have when we work together, resulting in shared responsibilities and resources. This team building, like never before, has opened the doors of 

opportunity to help us achieve our goals. 

Today, our firefighters, law enforcement officers, emergency medical personnel 

and emergency management personnel now recognize that there is NO such thing 

as a ‘‘routine call’’. Each and every day they put their lives on the line to make our 

communities safer. The sacrifice they make became evident on September 11,2001 

when thousands of innocent civilians lost their lives and hundreds of first responders paid the ultimate sacrifice for their fellow man—just doing their job. 

Since that horrendous act, thanks to the efforts of Congress, states and communities have received millions of dollars to ensure that they have the resources necessary to meet this new threat. On that note, I would like to provide you with some 
27

issues that states and local governments are dealing with to build this capability 

we all seek to attain. 

First, the reorganization of the federal government and creation of the Department of Homeland Security, under the leadership of a Cabinet Secretary, enabled 

the federal government to consolidate many agencies. This alone has served to minimize and, in some cases, eliminate the ‘‘turf battles’’ that have existed at the federal 

level. While there are challenges at the state and local level, we are committed to 

building relationships that are multi-disciplined and multi-jurisdictional. In Mississippi, working under a Governor’s Executive Order to standardize incident management, we are bringing down barriers that have existed for decades. 

Second, the outcome of our efforts will depend upon the state’s ability to build 

comprehensive and integrated plans at the state and local level. These plans must 

be based on vulnerabilities, matched with maximizing capabilities, and exercised 

and tested to determine shortfalls. Plans should address local, regional and state capabilities, utilizing and maximizing mutual aid built on a tiered response plan recognizing that not every community needs a Level A Hazmat capability, but EVERY 

community needs some basic response capability. In Mississippi, we have taken that 

approach and are building this tiered response plan that increases in capability at 

every level. Funds from the Department of Homeland Security are enabling us to 

build and enhance this capability. As a result, 81 of our 82 counties and 178 of our 

312 municipalities are members of a Statewide Mutual Aid Compact. Development 

of this comprehensive strategy supports the national strategy for homeland security 

and can only be achieved through continued state responsibility for management of 

this program to ensure plan uniformity and integration. 

Third, just as we are building a team approach to preparedness, our ability to 

share intelligence information must be based on team building and mutual respect 

and trust between the various emergency responders and law enforcement entities. 

Every member of the law enforcement community from the federal, state and local 

level must have the ability to share real-time information and receive critical threat 

information as it relates to their jurisdiction. Fusing this information at the appropriate level, analyzing the information, and providing an assessment to state and 

local law enforcement is critical to our success in this effort. Availability of the most 

current technology to every level of law enforcement is vital to the timely sharing 

of this information. However, in this process we must not forget what could be the 

most important element of this process—the average citizen. Recognition and reporting of unusual activities in our neighborhoods and communities may very well be 

the one factor that prevents future attacks. Public education and awareness to their 

role is a major component of our efforts to secure our homeland, beginning in every 

neighborhood. 

Last but not least, we must ensure that we can sustain this planning and capability for the long term. Development of this capability is largely dependent upon 

our ability to build relationships. It’s happening every day in the communities and 

states across this nation. As states we recognize our role and responsibility and are 

moving rapidly to ensure we take the steps necessary to develop and sustain this 

capability. As a nation, we can only be secure when every community in every county in every state is secure. While we recognize that we must prioritize securing our 

critical infrastructure and developing a comprehensive response strategy to include 

local, regional and state capability, we must not forget that every community in our 

nation must be a part of this effort. I urge you to continue to provide the resources 

to the states as we work with all of our communities to ensure the security of our 

homeland. 

Next, I would like to focus on the specific issues that adversely affect the state 

and local ability to development and sustain a comprehensive homeland security 

strategy. 

First I think it is important to recognize that ‘‘one size does not fit all’’. States 

should be allowed the flexibility, within DHS guidelines, to utilize the funds to meet 

those needs.Such things as: . 

• Allow the State Administrative Agency (SAA) to sub-allocate funds based on 

guidelines without requiring step by step involvement of Office for Domestic 

Preparedness (ODP), i.e. equipment requests. Under the current process, states 

are required to submit to ODP a sub-allocation plan. Once the state receives 

ODP approval jurisdictions are then required to submit an equipment list and 

submit to the state for approval. Once the state completes the review process, 

each jurisdiction’s list is submitted to ODP for approval. Once the state has received approval for the equipment list, the jurisdiction is notified and then signs 

a sub-grant application and returns it to the state. Once this has been done the 

jurisdiction is allowed to purchase the equipment. This burdensome process results in an increased work load for ODP, the state and local governments and 
28

an unnecessary delay in our first responders receiving the equipment they need 

to do the job we ask them to do. 

• Allow SAA to approve local changes to equipment requests. The evolvement 

of technology, changing vulnerability assessments and improved capabilities justify the need for this flexibility and supports our cities and counties in this fluid 

environment. 

• Minimize paperwork or on-line requirements for the SAA. Once the application is approved, showing the 80 percent pass-through or grant distribution plan 

and/or formula, the federal government should, accept, approve and fund the 

application-don’t keep asking for more information! In Mississippi, we not only 

have met the pass through deadlines, we exceeded the amount that was required to be passed through. 

Second, coordinate all Homeland Security Grant Programs throughout the federal 

government to allow a coordinated implementation by the States, counties and cities. One example, the Bioterrorism Grants provided from the Department of Health 

and Human Services to states and Fire Grants to local fire departments need to be 

concurred with by the States to ensure that all initiatives are supportive and not 

repetitive There is only one strategy and all initiatives should support this statewide strategy. Yet, the all-hazards approach must be maintained along with traditional all-hazards capacity building programs. 

Third, continue providing planning funds that will enable the states to enhance 

existing, comprehensive, all-hazards emergency management plans. Up to this 

point, planning funds have been dedicated to updating vulnerability and capability 

assessments, the state homeland security strategy, and response plans to the new 

threat environment. Continuation of planning funds will allow states to take the 

planning to the next level—the local level. 

Fourth, track support of first, second and other emergency responders by comparing improvements in capability as evidenced in annual reports already requiring 

by ODP. Don’t require additional reports. This places an enormous burden on state 

and local governments already operating with limited resources. 

Fifth, remember that development of a capability is only the beginning—

sustainment of that capability will be the challenge. States need to have assurances 

of the federal will to fund these initiatives for the long term. With limited shelflife of equipment, improvements in technology and training upgrades states will 

need consistent and predictable funding. 

In closing, I would like to address some issues that I think warrant comment as 

together we find ways to make the homeland security programs user-friendly and 

effective. 

Refine the Threat Alert level system by targeting the warnings to a specific infrastructure sector or region of the country. Changing the system at this point will only 

further confuse the public. Enhance current warning systems that are proven such 

as NAWAS and EAS to provide timely warning and protective measures to state, 

local governments and the general public. 

Preserve pre-9/11 Grant Programs such as the Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG). These grants provide the funds necessary to sustain valuable 

programs that have taken years to develop and have proven invaluable time and 

time again. Grants such as EMPG provide the cornerstone for our state and local 

all-hazards capability. Currently state and local emergency managers are playing a 

vital role in homeland security. Loss of this grant will undermine an all-hazards approach to preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation. Our communities will 

continue to be ravaged by floods, tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes. Mississippi currently has 10 open disasters for which we are managing recovery programs. Homeland Security is just another threat that has consequences that must 

plan for and be prepared to manage. Emergency Management is the only—non-discipline specific, non-jurisdictional specific element that can pull the various programs together. Homeland Security should not come at the expense of these other 

programs. We should build on what is already in place. 

Each and every day our communities become more secure and our first responders 

better prepared. Achieving our goal to make our homeland secure will take time. 

This is a team effort. States are committed to being a team player. Give us the resources we need to meet the challenge. Don’t tie our hands. Give us the flexibility. 

Hold us accountable, but help us do our job better. 

I appreciate this opportunity and will be glad to answer any questions you may 

have.

Mr. SHADEGG. I want to thank each of you for your very thoughtful statements. I want to advise the members of the committee that 

the clock is accurately counting down time, but the wire between 
29

here and the light out there is not connected very well, and so half 

the time it does not reflect what the clock reflects. So I did not 

count off any of these gentleman. I thought their statements were 

useful, although all of them went slightly over, but we will accept 

that. I will try to make the clock connect as best as possible with 

the light out there so you know where you are on our time. You 

already had a first responder deal with the thermostat. Warm 

enough in here for there to be a fire somewhere nearby, but we 

haven’t got a first responder to try to fix our clock. At least no one 

is here cleaning our clock. 

In any event, to begin with questioning, and I will try to keep 

the wire connected so we can see how much time is left and it is 

not now—I have a green light—let me focus first on one aspect of 

H.R. 3266. As you know, H.R. 3266 preserves all of the existing 

grant programs; an important first step. It also preserves the ability of States to apply for homeland security grants. But significantly, it opens up this concept of allowing regions to apply. Mayor 

Garner, I know you addressed that issue and expressed some concern and I think thoughtfully outlined three different concerns you 

would have with the issue of allowing regions to apply. But given 

that we have communities not unlike the District of Columbia here 

where we have the District, we have Maryland nearby and Virginia 

nearby, there are clearly regions that cross State borders. 

We have States across the country where major cities sit literally 

on a State boundary. So if we could, I would like to begin by asking 

each of you to respond as to that aspect of the bill, if you believe 

it would be appropriate for regions to be allowed to apply; if you 

think there should be conditions allowing regions to apply, or if you 

think it is not appropriate for Congress to take that step and the 

legislation as H.R. 3266 applies. So I will throw it open to any of 

you. 

Mr. GARNER. Mr. Chairman, let me just say, the question I guess 

again about—have the regional cooperation to control the money, 

Let me say no. Clearly the States have funding needs relative to 

homeland security and should have some Federal money for those 

needs as we have always supported. And clearly, there should be 

some moneys available to encourage regional cooperation for funding going to counties as well, as we have always supported. However, to assume that cities and counties will not work together is 

simply wrong thinking. More to the point, our surveys show that 

money sent to the States is not reaching the cities. 

And we need to act now to help prevent acts of terrorism not 

simply prepare to respond after an attack. And prevention is primarily a police activity and we are responsible for most of the police in the Nation. Let me also say, Mr. Chairman, one of the 

things that mayors across this Nation have consistently have said, 

be that they are Democrat or Republicans, fact that the money 

should come directly to first responders, which is the mayors across 

this Nation. They also say we are stretched to the limit, Mr. Chairman, with respect to our budget. As one of the Congressman indicated in one of his remarks, that we need predictable income in 

order to fix this budgetary problem. In terms of inoperability, we 

work—before that lexicon came about, we worked with each other, 
30

communities. We have always done that in our States. But again, 

it comes down to a chicken or the egg. 

Mr. SHADEGG. You don’t oppose the inclusion of regions in the 

legislation? 

Mr. GARNER. Again, I will always say, Mr. Chairman, that I 

think the money basically should come directly to first responders 

and that is the mayor. It seems though, Mr. Chairman, that money 

goes to State House by way of Federal Express, but it comes to us 

by way of horse and buggy. 

Colonel LARSEN. As I said, I felt the regional approach was very 

important. How are you going to define that. Are you going to use 

10 FEMA regions and or are you going to just start creating them 

across the country in certain higher threat areas? I think that will 

be an issue that needs to be decided. It is very important—I did 

an exercise here about 18 months ago where we set off a dirty 

bomb in front of the Smithsonian and there was real challenges 

about Virginia and Maryland. Are you going to leave—people leave 

the city and bring radiological contaminated cars and vehicles to 

your States or whatever? The only way we can be prepared for that 

are the exercises that this sort of thing will fund because I don’t 

think Virginia, Maryland and the District has the money themselves to do those sort of regional events. Maybe you do it through 

the FEMA districts. But I think the most important word is crossjurisdictional. That is the problem we have in homeland security. 

Mr. LATHAM. I am the Vice Chair of the Central United States 

Earthquake Consortium, and we have been doing regional planning 

for years. We have done regional planning with other States to 

work on evacuations. In Mississippi, we have developed homeland 

security regions. We developed mutual aid that requires not only 

the counties, but cities to be part of this mutual aid compact because in an event, regardless of the cause, it will require resources 

from multiple jurisdictions and multiple disciplines. 

So, we have to build not only at the local level and even regionally up to the State, but we have to think outside the box, as well, 

and be prepared. I wouldn’t want to do that at the expense of the 

other programs that we are also trying to mimic. 

Mr. SHADEGG. I do have a question about, Mayor Garner about 

how quickly money gets there and your question about Federal Express and Pony Express. But unfortunately—and that goes to the 

45-day distribution requirement we put in the distribution of the 

moneys that we just put out, and whether or not that is working 

or not working. Regrettably I am out of time and I will turn to the 

ranking member, Mr. Thompson. 

Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Taking part of your 

comment about the regions, you know there are 25,000 cities in 

America. And an average one is about 8,000 in population. One of 

the challenges we have is how do you make the whole notion of 

homeland security a real issue and instill confidence in the citizens 

of those communities that everybody is important. I represent a 

rural district. I don’t have a Boston, Massachusetts or a Newark, 

New Jersey, but I do have communities of great importance. So 

how do you see the planning process for making sure that American citizens feel secure in their communities regardless of population as it relates to this legislation? 
31

Colonel LARSEN. I am not sure post 9/11 we are ever going to be 

able to make every citizen feel secure in this country. I think that 

is a new reality we have to understand. We are not going to go 

back to that sense of security we had before. We can’t afford to protect everything. But I think perhaps those FEMA regions might be 

a place to start where there was that regional approach. And so 

that would take—if you look at the FEMA region that covers your 

district, I am sure there are some larger municipalities in there 

that would even provide first responder capabilities to your district 

in the event of an attack. 

That is what is different about this than the Cold War. If the Soviets hit us, it was going to be every city. We couldn’t depend on 

Philadelphia helping out, but now we can depend on our neighbors. 

Mr. THOMPSON. My point here is to try to address the need for 

planning, and if you do it in a coordinated fashion, you can still 

provide some degree of comfort and security to the people who don’t 

live in large metropolitan areas. But those of us who represent 

rural areas have a fundamental problem with the realization of 

likely terrorist threats. You know, we don’t have a Statue of Liberty or the Liberty Bell in RFD Mississippi, but we have some of 

the finest folk in the world that live there. 

And we have to create some degree of comfort among those citizens, too. So I don’t want this committee, in its planning, to overlook that. I think that is real important. And the planning for 

whatever happens is real important, but you have to make those 

departments and other people understand that. 

Colonel LARSEN. You don’t have a Pentagon or Statue of Liberty 

there, but you have rail cars filled with chlorine and other highly 

toxic substances going through your district that would be a likely 

target. That is why the regional response capability that is planned 

for and practiced is important. That is what is difficult when we 

say where are these critical facilities. Do you know how many rail 

cars are moving around with chlorine gas right now and other 

chemicals? There are a lot of them. It is not those fixed facilities. 

They go through your district, I agree with you. 

Mr. LATHAM. I would like to elaborate on that a little bit, Mr. 

Thompson. The regional planning is important and I say we have 

done it in Mississippi. We have developed regions and we are doing 

regional planning. And even if you expand that beyond the State 

into multiple States, the State has to be involved to make sure it 

supports both States or multiple State strategies so we are all on 

the same sheet of music. And I would like to emphasize once again 

that post 9/11 in October of 2001, the State Emergency Operations 

Center in Jackson, Mississippi received over 700 calls and reports 

of suspicious white powder. Now most of these calls came from 

rural Mississippi. And every one had to be treated as an actual 

threat, and these firefighters and these first responders had no 

idea how to do that. 

So building the capability at the lowest level is important. Granted, it may be to the point of recognizing, doing the planning that 

you are talking about, doing the training and the exercising to the 

lowest level of government is important, if nothing more, to recognize that maybe this is beyond our capability, back off so that we 

can pull in regional teams to be able to manage the scene much 
32

better. But any rate, regardless of the size of the region, however 

you define the region, I think the States have to be involved in that 

process. 

Mr. GARNER. Let me say, Mr. Chairman, we are concerned that 

regions get put together without our input, but getting to the region might be a better way than the States. We want to make sure 

that we are at the table in that process in terms of when you, perhaps, look at the region versus State. So that is basically—that is 

basically how I would say it. 

Mr. SHADEGG. The Chair would now call on the chairman of the 

full committee to question. 

Mr. COX. Thank you, Mr. Shadegg. I think your testimony has 

been outstanding and very helpful and the member questions have 

been very helpful as well, and member comments. 

Mayor Garner, if I may start with you, you have made the point 

just now and in your formal testimony that cities should not find 

themselves the subject of a grant application by a region that 

somebody else puts together. I think that is a reasonable point. It 

is not presently reflected in the legislation, so I want to ask you 

if we explicitly require that all jurisdictions that are included within a region be consenting partners to the application. Would that 

address that concern? 

Mr. GARNER. I am not so sure, Congressman, but let me just say 

that cities, as I understand it, don’t control the threat level of the 

system that set the threat level. We also don’t manage the borders 

or control the entry of terrorists into our Nation, but we do control 

the local police and there is simply no substitute for local police 

guarding critical infrastructures or protecting public events and 

gathering intelligence, especially when the national threat level is 

increased. What we are asking for is perhaps is a partnership at 

the end of the day. Most of the funding for personal activities, as 

you know, will still come from the local government more or less. 

Mr. COX. But just to be clear on the point, does it address your 

concern if we were to require in the legislation that when regions 

apply for grants through the Department of Homeland Security, 

the jurisdictions included within that region must be consenting 

partners in the application? 

Mr. GARNER. Yes, sir. 

Mr. COX. I want to be clear on that point. The reason that we 

are driven to this regional approach is that we have, first of all, 

heard it over and over again from the first responders across the 

country in our hearings. 

Second, because as Mr. Thompson points out, with tens of thousands of cities in the country and an average population per city 

of 8,000 people roughly, the Department’s view is that they would 

be overwhelmed with applications if they have to take an application from every one. Beyond that, if we were to make grants on 

that basis, we would miss the opportunity that mutual aid agreements have been providing for us and that is that you don’t need—

you can share a lot of this equipment; you don’t need to replicate 

it in every single small town. And so we want to drive this mutual 

aid agreement process and reward it because it has been so successful. 
33

Finally, with respect to how these regions get formed, I am a little bit chary about saying let us take the old FEMA regions, because what we are trying to do here is encourage innovation, and 

we are trying to grant flexibility to meet different homeland security challenges. We have done these two top-off exercises recently, 

and it is just a very different situation depending on the nature of 

the attack. 

If what you are trying to plan for is evacuation based on a dirty 

bomb, then weather patterns to a significant extent are going to 

dictate what that sensible region is for planning purposes. If, on 

the other hand, you are looking at an attack on the food supply in 

Iowa, then you are going to be concerned perhaps with the pattern 

and rates of disease spread in crops. 

So what we are suggesting in this legislation is that the Department of Homeland Security be empowered to evaluate applications 

from regions that can be pure ad hockery based on the threat that 

they perceive and the way that they want to meet it. So that, 

Mayor Garner, your city may be part of one region for one purpose 

and another reason for another purpose. 

What we are most anxious to do here is solve the problem and 

spend the money as wisely as possible. And with that in mind, I 

want to ask a question about mutual aid agreements. You mentioned it, Mr. Latham, in your testimony. Some States have them, 

some States don’t. It seems to be something of a trend. What can 

we do to encourage more of this? 

Mr. LATHAM. I am not sure if you are aware of it, but the National Emergency Management Association has what is called 

EMAC, Emergency Management Assistance Compact. And what I 

think now, all but maybe a couple States are signed on. Mississippi 

took that program and it is a very proven program in natural disasters, we have actually implemented a system similar to that in 

Mississippi called the Statewide Mutual Aid Compact that was in 

place pre-9/11. At the time of 9/11, we had only 18 of our 82 counties and about 25 of 312 cities that were members. But since 9/11, 

using a comprehensive strategy in Mississippi, we have used that 

to encourage signing on to this compact. 

So now we have 81 of our 82 counties with the 82nd one in the 

process and 178 of our 312 cities members of that compact because 

we recognize, that regardless of the event or the cause, local resources, at whatever level, will be exhausted totally, and we have 

to bring in resources from another city, from another county, 

maybe, even using EMAC and maybe from another State. We have 

been able to use our homeland security funds and increase mutual 

aid compact in Mississippi. 

Mr. COX. My red light has just gone on, and I want to get a question under the wire which is to you, Colonel Larsen. You have challenged us to think about what significant loss of life means, so I 

accept your challenge in needing to think about it, but we need 

your help while you are here. You laid out the problem very nicely, 

and tell us how you might answer it if you were forced to do so? 

Colonel LARSEN. I was afraid you were going to ask that. I have 

been thinking about homeland security for 10 years and writing 

about it. But since I put those words to paper last night, I had a 

hard time getting that off my mind because I think it is very crit-
34

ical to your point of prioritization. And late last night, sitting there 

thinking about standing in that museum in Oklahoma City, it is 

hard to imagine how 168 wouldn’t be significant. But from a national perspective, you know, you almost have to take the perspective of General Eisenhower when he was talking to the 101 Airborne early on the morning of 6 June. 

He knows these guys are going to jump in there and they are 

going to lose a bunch of them. There are going to be some losses, 

but we are not going to stop the invasion because people are going 

to die. Likewise, we can’t spend ourselves into bankruptcy trying 

to prevent or respond to every event and every car bomber. I would 

be happy to help you think about that, but I will take the question 

for the record because I would like to spend some time sitting and 

thinking about it and getting back to you. I think it is critical to 

the success of your legislation. 

Mr. COX. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. PASCRELL. I have to respond to that. The danger in—I think 

there is a major danger in what you just said. I don’t think we are 

talking about the numbers, God forbid, of fatalities. I don’t think 

that is what determines terrorism or the level of terrorism. I think 

what determines it are the circumstances. I mean if there was a, 

God forbid—let us talk and put it on the table—if we don’t do it, 

who is going to do it, an explosion by a terrorist and we determine 

that in a restaurant in Cheyenne, Wyoming, it would seem we 

would have to respond, and the FBI would have to respond and a 

lot of other agencies would respond. 

So I am not particularly—I am not thinking about it in terms of 

numbers. I am thinking about it in terms of the circumstances. 

And if there were indeed as has happened in other countries where 

you stopped commerce, you may not have a great loss of life, but 

you still wouldn’t have to respond to that particular situation. So 

I don’t think we should get into the numbers situation. I think it 

will be determined by the circumstances. What you are saying really is pretty dangerous. 

Mr. SHADEGG. I appreciate the gentleman’s creativity in trying to 

state a point of order. I don’t think it states his point of order. 

However you are only stepping on your ranking members’ time so 

we will now call on the ranking member of the full committee, Mr. 

Turner, for questions. 

Mr. TURNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As our witnesses have 

heard, we are trying to deal with a very difficult issue, which is 

how do you pass out Federal money to the States and the local governments for homeland security? There is a full range of choices, 

and when you look at the two pieces of legislation before this committee, the one introduced by Mr. Cox and the other introduced by 

the members on the Democratic side, you see many similarities in 

what we are trying to do. But there is one stark difference in the 

two approaches, and that is under Mr. Cox’s bill, the funding for 

homeland security would be based on a determination of the threat 

by the Department of Homeland Security. 

Under the Democratic version, we suggest that there should be 

a process, a bottoms-up process, whereby we would take the information on general threats and vulnerabilities in our communities 

and develop what we call in our bill the essential capabilities that 
35

each community should have. Those capabilities would vary from 

community to community based upon the actual, on the ground differences in those communities. 

If, for example, you live in a community that has a lot of rail 

traffic coming through with a lot of chemical tank cars, or you live 

on an interstate highway with a lot of chemical tankers, then you 

might have a different threat and vulnerability or different vulnerability than perhaps a community without those kind of transportation systems. If you lived in a city that is located below a major 

dam, which, if blown up by terrorists could flood your community, 

you may have a different vulnerability. But it seems to me that 

what we need your help on—and I might direct this to you, Mr. 

Latham, because you are the director of emergency management 

for the State of Mississippi, and you happen to be from one of those 

States that did not get any money under the one grant program 

that the Congress has put into law that is based supposedly on 

threat—the high threat urban grant program. 

That program has provided funds to about 19 different States 

and 30 different areas of the country. Now that program, the high 

threat urban area grant program, is designed and probably was a 

response to the fact that our large cities said that they weren’t getting their fair share of homeland security money and they didn’t 

like the formula approach that we have in—some of our grant programs, so they wanted their share and Congress passed this high 

threat urban grant money. But even though we have written the 

Department of Homeland Security on numerous occasions asking 

them for the criteria on which they disburse that money, we have 

yet to get an answer. 

Now that is one choice. The other choice is to develop a list, as 

we suggest in our alternative, of the essential capabilities that communities across America should have to respond to terrorist attacks, an approach that would assess not only the threats, but the 

vulnerabilities that you may encounter in the respective locales. 

And it seems to me, Mr. Latham, most of the time when you are 

working in Mississippi trying to prepare for the problem of terrorist 

attack and response, that you are looking at vulnerabilities, but 

you don’t have the information necessary to tell you whether it is 

a threat today or whether that same threat will be there tomorrow. 

Now under Mr. Cox’s legislation, when you apply for a grant, you 

would be required to give a description of the source of the threat 

to which the proposed grant relates, including the type of attack for 

which the applicant is preparing for and seeking the grant funding. 

Which of the two approaches makes the most sense in terms of 

your background, your experience, in trying to prepare to deal with 

the security of the State of Mississippi? 

Mr. LATHAM. Mr. Turner, there are several issues. You mentioned vulnerability and capabilities being bottom up. Every municipality, every town, every village, every county in the State of 

Mississippi is part of that process we are doing right now. They are 

submitting their capabilities to us based on what they did have, not 

what they have based on the money we have given them to purchase this new equipment. We will submit that to the Department 

of Homeland Security by the deadline, which is the end of December. That will be the basis for the strategy for the next 3 years. 
36

But I think the question is what is the threat? Tomorrow the 

threat may be different. New information will reveal that this is a 

fluid environment. How do we build a capability if we don’t build 

it in every community. I will give you a good example. During Operation Liberty Shield, when we received information from the Department of Homeland Security about what potential targets 

around the Nation, there were none for Mississippi. We have a nuclear power plant. We have two major ports on our gulf coast. We 

actually—we have several pipelines that come together where 75 

percent of the jet fuel for the northeast comes together. The facility 

was guarded by one security individual that was on contract. 

So the message is, there is a threat in every community. If we 

don’t build this capability from the bottom up for every community, 

then how do you sell our public, how do you convince the public 

that they need to be a part of this. If they do these capability assessments and vulnerability assessments and then don’t provide 

them the funds to do what we are asking them to do, then how do 

you make them a partner in what we are trying to do. This has 

to transcend jurisdictional boundaries and discipline boundaries. 

Granted, that in the higher populated areas, the threat is bigger, 

but that does not mean that there is not a threat in every community of this Nation and our capability must be built on that assumption. 

Mr. TURNER. You can determine your vulnerabilities because you 

can see them. But if you had to base your grant funding solely on 

the threat, number one, you don’t always have the information, 

number 2, it may change from time to time? 

Mr. LATHAM. The threat information changes. So what is the 

threat? I think this is—what we know today may not be there tomorrow and we may have more information tomorrow. And we 

know this. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of sleeper cells in 

this country somewhere living in neighborhoods that are part of 

the community waiting for an opportunity to utilize soft targets or 

targets of opportunity. So we have to prepare for that. When we 

had the 700-plus anthrax threats, most of them came from rural 

areas. We still had to respond to them as if they were real. None 

were, but we have to respond to them. 

Mr. SHADEGG. Time of the gentleman has expired. The Chair 

would now call on the gentleman from Pennsylvania, the vicechairman of the committee, Mr. Weldon. 

Mr. WELDON. Thank you Mr. Chairman, I want to make some 

comments, first of all, on threats. We have to be careful in deciding 

this issue and make sure that it is not just based on population. 

Before getting involved in politics, I was a teacher and a fire chief 

of my hometown as a volunteer. The town had less than 5,000 population. Yet the year that I was assistant chief, we had the largest 

incident in America with the collision of two tankers, the chemical 

carrying tanker, Edgar M. Queeney and the Quintos. Killed 29 people and burned out of control for 3 days. 

That entire incident was handled by an all-volunteer force. No 

paid firefighters. So what I would say to you—and we get this 

problem inside the Beltway that we have all the answers here. The 

fire service has been handling the risk of this country for longer 

than the country has been a country. And we are talking only the 
37

military can handle a chemical incident. That is BS. How many soldiers have been in a chemical plant when it is totally involved in 

fire and you have got butane or propane? I can tell you a ton of 

fire departments that have been. And they have been handling that 

with their own equipment and do a great job. The fire service nationwide, they understand what their threats are and they understand locally what their needs are. Instead of trying to come in and 

tell them how to redo what they have been doing for 200 years, we 

ought to ask them what their problems are. 

And that is why we created the program, assistance to firefighter 

grants so they could identify based on what their needs are, where 

the money should go without the interference. And I got to put a 

shot at the States here. The States talk a good game. I can count 

on a number of fingers on my hand the number of States who put 

significant dollars in to the fire and EMS community. 

In fact, there are many States who don’t even take in and put 

a 2 percent surcharge on the foreign fire insurance for that State 

and give it back. Every State should have that. We ought to make 

it a requirement that if the States are going to determine how the 

money is going to be spent, then the States ought to put some dollars on the table, too, because it is not fair for them to come in and 

say we are going to tell you what your threats are and where the 

money should go. The States ought to be required to put some dollars on the table along with the Federal Government. 

I want to talk about the issue of regions. We have to make sure 

when we develop regions, that we don’t discriminate to the point 

where we discourage people from volunteering. I am not against 

paid firefighters. They do a fantastic job and we have to fully support them, but we also have to support our volunteers. And they 

protect—if we ever try to replace them, it would bankrupt America. 

We have to make sure we give them the support to volunteer to 

serve their communities and not make road blocks. 

I want to make another point. We have to put a provision in this 

bill, I am convinced, dealing with the issue of technology transfer. 

We spend $400 billion a year on the military. We have developed 

all kinds of great capability and technology. Yet we don’t transfer 

that technology to the first responder. Examples: We lost five or six 

firefighters in Boston when a warehouse was fully involved in fire. 

Two firefighters were in fighting the fire. Their air packs ran out. 

They collapsed. Four other firefighters went in to rescue them. All 

six were killed. Yet the military has developed technology that you 

can put on a suit that gives you the GPS location of where that 

soldier is all the time they are on the battlefield. 

And they have developed both horizontal and vertical GPS. The 

military has also developed transmitter technology that you can 

place an undergarment on a soldier that gives you the vital signs 

of the soldier, the heart rate the pulse and the condition. Why in 

the world don’t we have that for every first responder. If we had 

that kind of technology the two firefighters that were down in Boston, we would have known exactly where they are and we could 

have gotten them out of the building saving them and four other 

firefighters. 

So in this case it is not a case of new money, it is a case of telling 

the military that they got to do a better job in transferring tech-
38

nology they developed out to the first responder so it can be put 

into place quickly. There is a ton of technology along that line that 

we have not made the case and we have not forced the military. 

Military has paid for it once to get that technology out to the first 

responder community. 

And we need to make sure in this bill that we make a statement 

I think to that effect. In terms of mutual aid, most of the municipalities already do that. I think California has the best mutual aid 

program because in California, the State buys fire apparatus. They 

preposition it around the State and they tell the fire stations we 

will give you this fire truck, but you have to sign an agreement. 

When there is a major incident, you are going to provide that vehicle as a support for that incident and you have to take it there. 

No other State does that that I am aware of, except for California. We ought to use that model where the States take their own 

money, preposition equipment so that when a disaster occurs that 

local department—and there are 32,000 departments in the country 

have signed an agreement that they will take that equipment to 

the scene because it has been funded not just with their own local 

money from chicken dinners and tag days, but it has also been 

funded by the State and Federal Government. The use of these 

ideas I would hope as we move this bill forward that we could incorporate that I think will help the first responder. But keeping in 

mind, the ultimate solution for the risks that we have are not going 

to come out of the Beltway. They are going to come out of the 

mouths of the people who have been doing this job, either paid or 

volunteer. 

Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman for his comments and I 

would call upon the gentleman, Mr. Etheridge. 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me thank the 

gentleman from Pennsylvania and associate myself with his comments. That way, I won’t have to repeat them, because the truth 

is, let me just share with you as relates to North Carolina. Many 

of our fire and some of our rescue are on tax districts. So that 

means that they can enter into mutual aid. They have resources 

that are inadequate, because if you live in an area where you have 

a lot of resources, if you are in a rural area and have a low tax 

base, the problem still is there. 

Colonel Larsen, let me come back to something you said earlier. 

You just touched on the food threat. Several months ago, we had 

an exercise in North Carolina dealing with this whole. And I trust 

that as we develop this legislation we take a hard look at it, because if you have a large—today in this country as we produce 

many food products, in our case a lot of pork and poultry, it moves 

across this country. And we put a scenario in that within a matter 

of days, it may be just people we are talking about, but at the end 

of the day we would have to shut down every slaughtering plant, 

all the operations. 

What this would amount to is bring into a dead standstill the 

economic structures, our ability to export goods and services and 

for the people in this country, lose faith in our food supply, whether 

that were put in by terrorists or whether it just might be an accidental disease placed in a number of animals that would create a 
39

problem, specifically hoof in mouth disease. I think this is something we need to think about as we are moving. 

Gets me back to the point we made earlier. We are going to have 

to have a lot of help in the rural areas as well as the urban areas, 

because it may not be something we are thinking about, but I guarantee some other people are thinking about it. 

Mr. Mayor, let me come back to a point that was made before 

this committee and you made it earlier as it relates to regional 

funding, and we look at it differently in North Carolina because we 

have a lot of it in terms of regional partnerships. But you mentioned that and others have said so that this is a Federal responsibility, and a lot of cases federally driven that the Federal Government ought to share the bulk of the responsibility. What is the position of the U.S. Conference of Mayors on the responsibility of the 

Federal Government to pay for terrorist prevention and response? 

I assume they have a position? 

Mr. GARNER. Let me say Congressman, we have supported legislation in the Senate that would allocate funding on a variety of important factors such as population, population density, location of 

critical infrastructure, threat vulnerability and proximity to borders. 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. That being said then, I assume there is a position that it ought to be Federal, State and local mix, or is it total 

Federal? 

Mr. GARNER. Again, Congressman—. 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. Let me tell you the reason I ask that question 

because currently, whether it be a rural fire department or rescue 

squad, they are doing a lot of this stuff anyway. They can’t determine—and I think Congressman Weldon touched on it, they are 

not going to determine whether it is terrorists, whether it is natural or otherwise, these folks are going to respond. They are going 

to respond to it. They have done it for a long period of time. And 

we get called up here sometimes as if you are going to put it in 

a compartment and that is all it is going to be. We have to be careful as we legislate that we don’t send stuff down with the intent 

of helping that winds up categorizing and narrowing the focus that 

this money can only be used for this issue. It gets to the point that 

someone raised earlier that we aren’t going to allow them to supplant money. 

I think Congressman Frank said earlier, if you have laid off a 

fireman and you have laid off a police officer because local resources are short and you get new money, is that person only going 

to be responsible for one specific area? I don’t think so, and I don’t 

think they think that way. And that is where I am trying to head 

with my question. 

Let me move on, if I may. This question is for you again Colonel 

Larsen. In your testimony, you state that we must establish priorities for first responders’ funding and base it on risk and significant 

loss of life, et cetera, et cetera. In keeping with that statement with 

the point I just laid out as it relates to agro terrorism, whether it 

be induced by terrorists or man-made, it works out to be the same 

economic issue. Local governments, small and large, have to have 

a continual stream of money if they are going to meet these needs, 
40

especially today as it relates to all the changes that come in the 

mobility of population. 

Talk to me a little bit, because this is a whole different scenario 

than you laid out in your testimony, but it creates the same kind 

of impact because what terrorism is about is fear. You wind up 

with the same result. 

Colonel LARSEN. When we did Crimson Sky, where Senator Pat 

Roberts played the President of the United States, we had to end 

up killing 50 million animals in this country to get foot and mouth 

disease under control. That is a national problem that could have 

enormous economic consequences. That is the sort of threats—I am 

not worried about a single truck bomb in a State. It is a tragedy 

for that community. This is an economic tragedy for the Nation. 

North Carolina sends 20,000 hogs a day to the Midwest every day, 

20,000. So it is not just a North Carolina problem if you have FMD. 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. It is an American problem. 

Colonel LARSEN. That is the type of threats that this money 

should focus on, that level of threat. Not a single truck bomb, that 

is a tragedy. I am talking about a national threat. 

Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Chairman, at risk of getting your dander up, 

these folks are already doing a lot of work, the private folks. All 

of these people are working together with the States. What they 

really need is a national coordinated effort to help. 

Colonel LARSEN. Absolutely. 

Mr. SHADEGG. My dander doesn’t get up easily. I want to let you 

get your questions in. Although both the ranking member and I 

noted that when you said your time was almost up it was in fact 

well up. We both agreed to let you go. 

Mr. GARNER. Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. SHADEGG. Yes, sir. 

Mr. GARNER. May I be excused? I have got to try to catch a 6:30 

shuttle back. 

Mr. SHADEGG. Well, we appreciate very much your being here. 

We would request the other two witnesses stay. We do have two 

members left to question. Thank you, we appreciate it. You are excused. 

Mr. GARNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. 

Mr. SHADEGG. The gentleman from Connecticut, Mr. Shays, to 

question. 

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. And, Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit for the record an article, an NTI global security news wire, just 

read a paragraph talking about standards. It talks about a gentleman from GAO, Randall Yim, complains that efforts to establish 

homeland security standards aren’t comprehensive and the focus 

on training equipment for first responders isn’t enough to prepare 

them adequately for energies. Captain Michael Grossman of the 

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, who heads his county’s 

Emergency Operations Bureau, warns that people from different 

parts of the government have difficulty understanding one another. 

He recalls that during the 1992 Los Angeles riots triggered by the 

beating of motorist Rodney King, the local police responded to a domestic dispute call and were accompanied by Marines for backup. 

As one of the police officers approached the house, he yelled, cover 

me, meaning watch my back. To the Marines ‘‘cover me’’ meant lay 
41

down fire, so they fired more than 200 bullets down the house. Fortunately, no one was hit.

Global Security Newswire 

From Fridav, October 10, 2003 issue. 

GAO Pushes to Embed Homeland Security ‘‘Standards’’ Into U.S. PolicyMaking 

By Siobhan Gorman 

National Journal

WASHINGTON—Randall Yim probably doesn’t fit anyone’s picture of a homelandsecurity evangelist. Calmly sitting cross-legged at a conference table in his office in 

the General Accounting Office’s drab headquarters, Yim is the antithesis of fire and 

brimstone. His tone is low-key, almost professorial. And his attire is standard-issue 

Washington professional—a dark suit and tie. But as the GAD’s managing director 

for national preparedness, he is heading up the agency’s new effort to think big and 

long-term about homeland security. And he is relentlessly traveling the country and 

walking the halls of Congress to try to prod the rest of America into doing the same. 

Yim, a native of California and an environmental lawyer by training, came to the 

nation’s capital in 1998 to assume an only-in-Washington title: principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for installations, logistics, and environment. Within 

three months, he became deputy undersecretary of Defense for installations. He 

went on win earn the Defense Department’s Medal for Distinguished Public Service 

in January 2001. Working with the GAD while still at the Defense Department, Yim 

caught the eye of GAD Comptroller General David Walker. Impressed by Yim’s intellect, Walker wooed him to the GAD. Yim reported for duty in August 2001 and 

began to tackle defense and environmental projects. Two weeks later, terrorists 

slammed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. 

That day, a crusader was born. ‘‘I’m making the classic lawyer mistake,’’ Yim confessed to National Journal. ‘‘I had friends and colleagues killed in the Pentagon attack. Because of that personal connection, I feel a sense of urgency to go forward.’’ 

As ‘‘homeland security’’ emerged as a top federal priority, Walker asked Yim to lead 

an informal task force to give the GAD a handle on the issue. Next, Yim became 

the first national-preparedness director within the agency’s homeland-security team. 

Placing a newcomer in such a high-level role was unusual for the GAD, but the 

move was part of Walker’s effort to infuse new blood into the staid government 

watchdog agency. ‘‘Randall is very bright. He’s very creative,’’ Walker says. Colleagues describe the self-effacing Yim as ‘‘an intellectual,’’ ‘‘a visionary,’’ and ‘‘a consensus builder.’’

What keeps Yim awake at night is his worry that the nation’s approach to homeland security is unsustainable. Policy makers at all levels, he frets, think of homeland security as merely a ‘‘bolt-on’’ program. He disdainfully compares their attitude 

to that of the auto industry when it decided not to fundamentally rethink car designs in the 1970s after Ford Pintos started to explode when they were rear-ended. 

Automakers instead chose to simply bolt on bigger bumpers. Yim’s PowerPoint presentation to local officials even features a slide of a Pinto. His alternative: embedding 

homeland-security principles into all elements of public policy—from energy regulations to building codes. His challenge: persuading the governmental powers that-be, 

especially those in Congress, to make it happen. 

While the GAO is careful to maintain its standing as an objective outside evaluator of government endeavors, Yim’s work takes the agency into a new role—that 

of ideas broker and pitchman. Policy advocacy is ‘‘unusual for GAO,’’ Yim acknowledges. The GAO’s advocacy role on homeland security—coming on the heels of the 

agency’s lawsuit against Vice President Cheney to try to force him to divulge details 

of the meetings that led to the administration’s energy policy—suggests that Walker 

intends to make the government’s chief accountability agency a more potent force. 

Although the bulk of the GAO’s work consists of responding to congressional requests, Walker wants 10 percent of his agency’s efforts to be on major initiatives 

of its own. Walker described them as dealing with ‘‘more-strategic, complex, crosscutting, and longer-range issues.’’

Walker is determined to sell Congress on the GAO’s conclusions about long-range 

solutions to what it sees as significant problems. Walker says that his ‘‘client’’—Congress—is understandably preoccupied with short-term, localized issues because of 

lawmakers’ focus on winning re-election. But, he adds, the tendency of Congress and 

the executive branch to think small makes devoting some of the GAO’s energy to 

thinking big all the more important. 

The old reliable GAO seems well suited to thinking about the massive problem 

of homeland security in the post-9/ll world. It also seems suited to delivering harsh 
42

messages about what the nation must do to try to protect itself. In Yim’s view, at 

least, there’s a crying need for the government to adopt a take-your-medicine-andeat-your-vegetables approach. As Yim patiently outlined the GAO’s master plan for 

homeland security—flow charts and all—during two hour-long sessions in his office, 

he took a page from the environmental chapter of his life. In the 1970s, environmentalists began establishing standards aimed at ensuring that the government 

and companies were good stewards of Earth’s resources. Similar standards, he says, 

are needed for homeland security. For example, Yim would like to see a standard 

for ensuring that financial markets have the technology in place to withstand a variety of terrorist attacks. 

Currently, the Department of Homeland Security, Congress, and the private sector are haphazardly trying to establish standards for various aspects of homeland 

security. But Yim worries that unless these efforts become more unified and standardized, dangerous gaps are inevitable.

Thinking Big 

Randall Yim isn’t content to just tinker. ‘‘One of the concerns I have about homeland security,’’ he said, ‘‘is, we have to begin addressing the core issues.’’ He quickly 

ticks off several: Who is in charge? What should be done, and who should be doing 

it? Who should pay for these changes, and how? How do you hold people accountable? How do you track progress? 

As homeland-security strategies proliferate at all levels of government, Yim is dismayed to see that they are rarely connected to cost considerations - or to one another. He wants to bring the high-flying talk of strategies down to ground level, 

where planners could focus on such issues as how much it costs states, localities, 

and private businesses when the federal government raises the national terrorism 

threat level to, say, Code Orange - where it was for nearly nine weeks this year. 

After getting a better sense of costs, the planners’ next step would be to assess 

what homeland-security precautions are being taken and whether they are actually 

making the nation safer. Right now, Yim said, federal money is flowing out, and 

there’s no way to know whether it’s doing any good. Just last week, President Bush 

signed the $31 billion Homeland Security appropriations bill, which he declared ‘‘a 

major step forward’’ in efforts ‘‘to make our nation more secure.’’ But no one yet 

knows how much added security the $31 billion will really buy. Some $4 billion of the total will go toward resolving the myriad complaints of socalled first responders. Billions of dollars are being spent on first responders, not 

because the Department of Homeland Security has determined that the country’s 

greatest needs include ensuring that firefighters nationwide have hazmat suits, but 

rather because public officials were eager to heed the demands of the heroes of September 11. Plus, lawmakers all have large numbers of firefighters and police officers 

in their districts. 

Among the difficult post-9/11 questions is whether spending money on first responders is the best way to enhance local security. If beefing up first-responder 

squads is a wise way to spend federal homeland-security funds, are hazmat suits 

needed more than upgraded walkie-talkies? And are they needed more than computer access to a terrorist watch list? 

To begin intelligently answering these questions and weighing one demand 

against another, Yim said, the GAO should establish standards that detail what 

government and the private sector must do in order to assure a minimum level of 

security. There could, for example, be a standard for ensuring that a ship’s cargo 

is not tampered with en route from Singapore to New York City. 

Yim is not alone in seeing the creation of homeland-security standards as crucial. 

John Cohen, a cop-turned-homeland-security consultant, has helped states and localities, including Massachusetts and Detroit, draw up homeland-security strategies. 

How important is standardization? ‘‘It’s critical,’’ Cohen said. ‘‘You have got to get 

everybody talking the same language.’’

Several commissions have recommended the adoption of homeland-security standards. Most recently, the Council on Foreign Relations, in a project with former Sen. 

Warren Rudman, R–N.H., advocated national standards for first responders as the 

council lamented what it saw as their general lack of preparedness. The Gilmore 

Commission, headed by former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore, also strongly advocated standards in its December 2002 report.

Scattershot Standards 

No longer the exclusive territory of bean-counters, the wonkish topic of homelandsecurity standards has come into vogue on Capitol Hill in recent weeks. Lawmakers 

are targeting their standardization efforts at emergency workers. Meanwhile, various tentacles of the Homeland Security Department are grappling with the creation 

of an assortment of standards. Private industry may be the furthest along. 
43

Several members of Congress, relative newcomers to the standards debate, have 

quickly found religion. ‘‘We are told Moses traveled in the desert for 40 years because he didn’t have a plan,’’ Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D–N.Y., said at an October 2 

press conference announcing legislation to establish national standards for first responders. ‘‘What we’re trying to do with this bill is to get a plan, get standards, so 

that we know where we are and where we are going.’’

In late September, Rep. Jim Turner of Texas, who is the ranking Democrat on 

the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, started the standards stampede 

by introducing the PREPARE Act. Turner’s bill, which has attracted a host of Democratic co-sponsors, would require the Department of Homeland Security to establish 

a task force to recommend first-responder equipment and training standards. Then, 

the secretary would be required to submit a plan for getting states and localities 

to adopt the voluntary standards. (Federal funds would be tied to compliance.) Turner’s initiative was followed by the introduction of a similar bill sponsored by Rep. 

Christopher Shays, R-Conn., the chairman of a Government Reform Committee subcommittee, and Maloney, the head of the House Democrats’ Homeland Security 

Task Force. 

And on October 9, California Republican Christopher Cox, who chairs the House 

Select Committee on Homeland Security, unveiled part of a comprehensive homeland-security bill that includes a range of proposals—from aligning funding for state 

and local responders with a given locale’s vulnerability, to bolstering the Homeland 

Security Department’s intelligence arm. Cox said in an interview that first-responder standards are ‘‘something that will be covered in our legislation,’’ adding 

that he will work with Turner, Shays, and Maloney. Cox said he plans to mark up 

his bill before the end of the month. 

At the Department of Homeland Security, Alfonso Martinez-Fonts, chief liaison to 

the private sector, and Frank Libutti, undersecretary for information analysis and 

infrastructure protection, have been reaching out to private-sector groups to discuss 

new safety standards for the financial and telecommunications sectors, among others. Other officials at the department are working on physical-security standards for 

chemical plants and cargo containers. Still others are forging ahead on standards 

for emergency-response equipment. 

In the private sector, ASIS International, a trade group for the security industry, 

has been developing standards since June 2001. Earlier this year, it published 

guidelines to help companies perform a terrorism risk assessment, said Don Walker, 

who co-chairs ASIS’s guidelines commission and is chairman of Securitas Security 

Services USA. ‘‘There’s bits and pieces of work being developed by lots of organizations,’’ he said. ASIS will soon release guidelines for how private industry should 

respond to announced changes in the national threat level. The trade group is also 

working on guidelines for hiring and training private security guards. And Walker 

says his commission has listed 30 priority areas in which it wants to develop homeland-security guidelines. 

Still, Yim complains that the efforts to establish homeland-security standards 

aren’t comprehensive. And the focus on training and equipment for first responders 

isn’t even enough to prepare them adequately for emergencies. Capt. Michael Grossman of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, who heads his county’s emergency operations bureau, warns that people from different parts of the government 

have difficulty understanding one another. He recalled that during the 1992 Los Angeles riots triggered by the beating of motorist Rodney King, the local police responded to a domestic-dispute call and were accompanied by marines for backup. 

As one of the police officers approached the house, he yelled, ‘‘Cover me,’’ meaning 

‘‘Watch my back.’’ To the marines, ‘‘Cover me’’ meant ‘‘Lay down fire,’’ so they fired 

more than 200 bullets toward the house. Fortunately, no one was hit.

ISO: In Search of a Plan 

Creating standards, Yim insists, is the best way to figure out who’s responsible 

for each aspect of homeland security. Again, he looks to the environmental realm 

for a positive example: the International Organization for Standardization. It’s 

known as ISO, which was derived from the Greek isos, meaning ‘‘equal.’’ The group’s 

American corollary is the American National Standards Institute. Yim and his colleagues want to translate what ISO has done for international environmental policy 

and apply it to U.S. homeland security. 

Launched in 1947, ISO aimed to blend private and public demands for cost control 

and quality control, so that a company would not be put at a competitive disadvantage for producing a high-quality product. The organization has since established 

more than 13,700 voluntary standards in business and environmental management 

that apply to everything from the size of a screw thread to proper procedures for 

recycling aluminum cans. ISO has two series of standards: ISO 9000 rules deal with 
44

general management specifications; ISO 14000 rules specify what a company must 

do to minimize environmental damage. By defining how things are to be done, these 

standards clarify both who’s in charge and what they should be doing. 

Yim sees promise for homeland security in following the lead of the environmental-standards efforts, which began with rules for toxic-waste cleanup and expanded to include such details as how much radiation a computer screen is allowed 

to emit. ISO 14000 was among the reforms inspired in the late 1970s by the Love 

Canal pollution disaster. And as ISO 14000 evolved, it became recognized essentially as common law, so that a company hit with a lawsuit can be held responsible, 

in court, for failing to meet those standards. For business, Yim said, the selling 

point was ‘‘increased reliability, decreased liability.’’ That is, companies can feel assured that if they are meeting the standard, they won’t be held accountable for not 

doing more. 

In the realm of homeland security, Yim sees endless opportunities for crafting 

standards. To name a few: container security; protocols for assessing a city’s 

vulnerabilities; power-grid protection; building codes; evacuation capacity for main 

thoroughfares; airline screening procedures; and, of course, emergency-response 

teams. There could also be standards for a hospital’s capacity to triage patients or 

for a communications system’s ability to operate despite a power outage. (During the 

Northeast’s massive blackout this August, the 911 emergency communications systems failed in Detroit and New York City.) 

Yim argues that, over time, homeland-security standards would transform the 

way the government and industry protect the nation. ‘‘It’s a strategic approach that 

links theory to action and, I think, would significantly advance where we need to 

go as a country in homeland security,’’ he says. ‘‘And it would give us a measure 

of whether we’re making progress in being better prepared.’’ Establishing standards 

would help ensure that there are no weak links in the ‘‘homeland-security supplyand-demand chain,’’ he added. That should make the nation get more for its homeland-security dollar. 

Standards would also provide a basis for gathering uniform data on what is or 

isn’t effective, and for performing cost-benefit analyses. Plus, involving the business 

sector at the outset would ensure that these standards ‘‘are not blind to costs,’’ Yim 

said. 

Industry standards that the government sees as voluntary could end up being 

mandated by insurers offering terrorism coverage. And, Yim said, citizens would 

probably be willing to pay more for a government service—their local 911 system, 

for example—if they had the assurance that the system met a national standard of 

quality. 

Developing homeland-security standards wouldn’t be quick or cheap, Yim admitted, but he argues that it’s time for homeland-security policy to become less panicdriven. He foresees government and industry working together to craft each individual standard, and he thinks that the GAO should form the teams to design each 

one. 

Since the GAO is the investigative arm of Congress, Congress is its top client, of 

course. For Yim and his team, the key to success will be whether they can sell the 

Hill on their homeland-security vision. Although currently fixated on first responders, lawmakers such as Shays and Maloney are open to the idea of standards for 

other homeland-security arenas as well.Maloney said she’s particularly open to 

standards involving cargo, power grids, water, and nuclear plants. 

In fact, perhaps a homeland-security bill already in circulation will turn out to 

be just the vehicle Yim and his team need. With that in mind, they have been quietly buttonholing lawmakers in both parties. Yim’s hope is to incorporate a broad notion of homeland-security standards into legislation before Congress adjourns for the 

year. His immediate window of opportunity will soon close, he fears: Thinking big 

homeland-security thoughts is unlikely to top many lawmakers’ agendas in an election year.

I don’t know if we have that kind of extreme, but what I haven’t 

heard today, Colonel Larsen, is the issue of standards. I want you 

to first respond to the report done by Senator Rudman. They talk 

about potentially $999 billion needed, and then when we question 

them they said, heck, it could be a lot less. But just speak to the 

issue. 

Colonel LARSEN. Well, I told you, I was asked to be on that panel 

and I just—the methodology bothered me. Well, two things bothered me. If you look at the commissioners on there, not one of them 
45

were from the State and local communities, no experience except 

Senator Rudman, who 25 years ago had been a State Attorney 

General. I mean, you know, I have got great respect for Judge Webster and all the other folks on there, but they weren’t State and 

local people. Their methodology was to go to all these different organizations, the firefighters, the EMS, and, what is your wish list? 

What was their wish list? I mean, if I use that to—. 

Mr. SHAYS. Okay. So you question how they figured out the dollars. Do you question their basic analysis that we needed to set 

standards? 

Colonel LARSEN. No. The standards, that is a different question. 

I question the money figure for their methodology when they say 

how much do you need. Okay. The standards, I think that is a critical thing. 

Mr. SHAYS. You could question it in another way. Since they 

didn’t set standards, they would have no way of knowing what was 

needed. So on both accounts. 

Colonel LARSEN. A very good point. If you go to the Center for 

Domestic Preparedness in Anniston, Alabama, they have a room 

this size and they have all this equipment laying out there that 

first responders can buy. And the director took me around and 

said, well, here, they are selling this to some of the first responders. He said the bad news is it protects them against chemical vapors but not liquids. I said, so why are you letting them sell it like 

that for? And he said, because the Federal Government doesn’t set 

standards. But if you go down to Home Depot and buy an electrical 

cord, there are standards. 

Mr. SHAYS. I hear you. But what I am trying to, in my 3 and half 

minutes—. 

Colonel LARSEN. Sorry. 

Mr. SHAYS. I used up some of it improperly, too. But talk to me 

about what we do to get standards, how long you think it will take, 

et cetera. 

Colonel LARSEN. Length is going to be very frustrating to all of 

us, because I think you should do it right instead of wasting 

money. Perhaps we need something like that Underwriters Laboratory. Maybe a quasi-government something over here. To me, as a 

taxpayer, I wish the Department of Homeland Security can do it. 

I am not sure that system is going to work. But we need some sort 

of independent organization. 

Mr. SHAYS. First off, they are required to set standards. 

Colonel LARSEN. They have been slow. 

Mr. SHAYS. Okay. 

Colonel LARSEN. As a taxpayer, I would prefer that they do it. 

I mean, I would like to get them, I just want to make sure we get 

them right. 

Mr. SHAYS. By December, they have to tell us capacity, correct? 

We are getting all the local communities and States, they are going 

to come back and they are going to tell us capacity. Capacity tells 

us what they can do. What we want in standards is to know what 

they should do and to know who should do it, and who has the 

threat that has to need—for the need to be able to respond to it. 

So, for instance, I would argue that New York City probably needs 

more resources and Greenwich, Connecticut right near it than Ox-
46

ford, Connecticut a little further away, though Oxford has an airport. And so talk to me a little bit more about standards. 

Mr. Latham, do you want to jump in? 

Mr. LATHAM. I will talk about standards in terminology, standards in incident planning, and those kind of things, because the article you mention I think addressed that. And in Mississippi what 

we have done by Governor’s executive order is standardized incident management, requiring every first responder to operate under 

a standard system, the National Interagency Incident Management 

System, so that you have common terminology, unified commands 

so that everybody plays a part in the decisionmaking and then you 

have one incident—. 

Mr. SHAYS. That speaks to uniformity. But let me ask you this. 

Don’t you believe that some communities in Mississippi are more 

likely to have to face a threat than others? Some may have a chemical plant near, some may be on a throughway, some may just be 

totally out of the way. Are you treating them all the same? Are you 

doing it on a per capita basis? 

Mr. LATHAM. What we are doing is training everybody to the 

same standard. And I don’t believe that the standards should vary, 

regardless of the level, because—I mean, you don’t really know 

where the next incident will be, and we have to train everybody to 

the same standards. As far as equipment standards, I agree, that 

is a little bit more difficult. But there needs to be a standard in 

that equipment, and I think it should be in the Department of 

Homeland Security and the science and technology department. 

Whether they have the capacity to do that or not, I am not sure. 

Colonel LARSEN. Maybe your initial standard would be that you 

need to get the capability there within X number of hours. And 

over time we can move that from 10 to 5 to 4, but—and we just 

can’t have it in every community; but if the key was we can get 

the class A suit to a site within 5 hours. And so if we had that as 

a standard, then we could work toward that goal. 

Mr. SHAYS. That helps me to discuss one part of the standard. 

What I am trying to wrestle with is how do we as a government 

decide who in Mississippi gets it and who doesn’t. And that seems, 

to me, you set certain standards. You say there is a certain threat 

level here, we need certain capacity. I mean, for instance, the fire 

department in the community could tell us that they can put out 

three fires at one time, but the standard may say you don’t need 

to. Or you need to be able to put four fires out. That is the standard. Then if their capacity doesn’t match the standard, we know it 

is out of sync. Or it could be the reverse. They could be able to put 

out three fires, and we say you only need to put out two. That is 

kind of what I am wondering about. 

Colonel LARSEN. EPA says there is 123 chemical storage facilities 

that if attacked with truck bombs could threaten the lives of a million people. I think those 123 sites are clearly defined threats that 

should have the best response capability, if you want a specific example. But you can’t protect every railcar, but there are some big 

threat areas. 

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. 

Mr. LATHAM. Mr. Chairman, I would like to comment, too, because there are a lot of standards out there, not the least of which 
47

are some that have been developed jointly between NEMA and 

FEMA and the EMAP program, which is an accreditation program 

that takes assessments and capabilities with State and local governments of what is already in place, that we need to incorporate 

those in these standards to make sure that we are not duplicating 

something that is actually already there. 

Mr. COX. The gentleman’s time has expired. The gentleman from 

New Jersey, Mr. Pascrell. 

Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

There seems to be confusion on the local level about applying for 

these funds in the first place. And what I would suggest, Mr. 

Chairman, when we finally put together our final bill, that we do 

what FEMA does in terms of the Fire Act. They have gone all over 

the country and in certain regions and educated firefighters on how 

to apply. Of course, there is something to grant application, obviously. And this is so important, and I know firefighters tell me all 

the time, thank you for doing this and, you know, we have cleaned 

up our act on our application. We know primarily now why we 

didn’t get a positive response. Do you think that—if that is the 

case, do you think, very quickly, these two bills improve or could 

improve or would improve upon that situation? 

Mr. LATHAM. Let me address your first comment because we did 

that in Mississippi. We had town meetings, we had regional meetings. We had every town, village, city, and county represented. We 

took the majority of the paperwork burden away from them, and 

their application is only one or two pages. That includes an equipment list. We are holding them to what the priorities are; that is, 

having a personal protective equipment for their first responders, 

having a detection equipment where it is needed and having some 

decontamination. After that, you know, then it becomes a little bit 

more complex. We go to the regions and develop a much higher 

level of capability. 

But we did that, and actually I have not had any calls from any 

mayor, any supervisor, and I am not sure that the Congressman 

has, because if he had, I would have heard about it. But no complaints about the process. It is a little burdensome once we get into 

the actual award because of the paperwork that has to go up to 

ODP and back down. ODP should not have to approve every city, 

town, village’s equipment list. 

Mr. PASCRELL. What about point B? Do you think these two bills 

address any confusion that might exist? Because somehow the 

money is not getting through to many of these communities. You 

listen to the mayors. 

Mr. LATHAM. And I can’t address—I can tell you in Mississippi 

it is. And maybe the process is broken somewhere else, but it is 

working in Mississippi. 

Mr. PASCRELL. The Homeland Security money we are talking 

about? 

Mr. LATHAM. Yes, sir. 

Mr. PASCRELL. Okay. 

Mr. LATHAM. And we obligated the money on both the 2003 and 

2003 supplement within the 45 days, actually, within 30 days. 

Mr. PASCRELL. Was part of that money overtime, for instance? 

Mr. LATHAM. Just equipment money. 
48

Mr. PASCRELL. Well. 

Mr. LATHAM. And we didn’t—. 

Mr. PASCRELL. Well, it is a very different situation depending 

upon the region. 

Mr. LATHAM. Well, now when we had Operation Liberty Shield 

and then provided some of that infrastructure protection, overtime 

and stuff, when the applications came in we processed them and 

moved them on up to ODP. So we haven’t had any complaints on 

any of the process. 

Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you. The second point is a point that Curt 

Weldon made, Mr. Chairman, before when you stepped down for a 

moment. Technology transfer. We just had a very, very well attended meeting yesterday afternoon on helping—with the military 

particularly—the Mayo Clinic on brain injury research. A million 

Americans are affected every year, and there is a lot of our soldiers 

have been affected, obviously, unfortunately, and wounded in Iraq. 

The research that is being done by the military is being carried 

over into the civilian, and it really is working. It would seem to 

me—I don’t know how we would do it, but we need some agency—

well, we already have agencies. We have enough agencies. Somebody has to have the responsibility of coordinating this technology 

transfer down to the civilian, and particularly, particularly in 

Homeland Security. I think we are missing out, the military. We 

invest a tremendous amount of money in that budget. And you 

can’t tell me that that would not be helping us in many ways, and 

I think we need to explore those ways. And I think that is what 

Curt was talking about. And I would recommend it, I really would. 

I think it is important that we utilize it so that the ripple effect 

is felt far beyond the military as we have done in medicine. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. COX. I want to thank all of our members and especially our 

panel of witnesses, including Mayor Garner, who has left already 

to catch his flight. You have done a splendid job of educating us 

today. We appreciate it, we look forward to continuing to work with 

you. You are now excused, and this hearing is adjourned. Thank 

you. 

[Whereupon, at 6:15 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
49

A P P E N D I X 

——————

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD

QUESTIONS FOR THE HONORABLE JAMES A. GARNER FROM THE HONORABLE BENNIE

G. THOMPSON

Question: 1. A Council on Foreign Relations Task Force found recently that there 

are no agreed upon standards for emergency preparedness and no way to measure 

how prepared a locality is or should be. Do you feel that it is important that there 

be some way to measure preparedness levels and preparedness needs? Do you feel 

that it is important for us to set a comprehensive goal for ourselves, by which we 

can measure progress? No Response has been recieved.

Question: 2. When states and regions assess their emergency response needs, are 

they normally based on threats (that is, what terrorists want to do to me), 

vulnerabilities (that is, what targets are in the vicinity and how secure are they), 

or a combination of the two? Shouldn’t a Federal grant program take into account 

the total risk, both threat and vulnerability? No Response has been recieved.

Question: 3. Legislation introduced by Chairman Cox proposes to have grants reviewed by the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate of the 

Department. However, past testimony before the Select Committee has raised 

doubts about the ability of this Directorate to develop comprehensive threat assessments and otherwise carry out its mission. I am aware of no capability that it has 

to review grant applications. Do you believe that the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate should be put in charge of determining the distribution of grants to our nation’s first responders? No Response has been 

recieved.

Question: 4. H.R. 3266 would formalize a structure for allocating grants according 

to the assessed threat of terrorist attack. A program like this is already in place, 

namely the High Threat Urban Area grant program. There have been two rounds 

of funding through the High Threat Urban Area grants. The first round distributed 

grant funds to seven urban areas; the second round sent grant funds to 30 areas 

in 19 states and the Capitol region, including additional funds to the first seven. 

Do you anticipate that H.R. 3266 would similarly send the totality of first responder 

grant funding to only a few parts of the country? No Response has been 

recieved.

Question: 5. Would it be useful for first responder agencies to know how much funding is needed to help prepare for terrorist attack over the next five years, as provided in the PREPARE Act? Do we need a national goal to work towards? No Response has been recieved.

Question: 6. Who should determine the needs of our first responders—analysts in 

the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate of the Department, or the First Responders themselves? No Response has been recieved.

QUESTIONS FOR COLONEL RANDY LARSEN FROM THE HONORABLE JIM TURNER

1. A Council on Foreign Relations Task Force found recently that there are no 

agreed upon standards for emergency preparedness and no way to measure how prepared a locality is or should be. Do you feel that it is important that there be some 

way to measure preparedness levels and preparedness needs? Do you feel that it is 

important for us to set a comprehensive goal for ourselves, by which we can measure progress? No Response has been recieved.

2. To your knowledge, did anyone foresee that the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City would be the target of a devastating 1995 terrorist attack? Do you believe 

that Oklahoma City, today, would rank very high on a list of likely terrorist targets? 

Given that it is very difficult to predict where terrorists will strike next with any 

level of specificity, would you agree that it is better to increase our level of preparedness against terrorist attacks across the board? No Response has been 

recieved.

3. Legislation introduced by Chairman Cox proposes to have grants reviewed by the 

Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate of the Department. 

However, past testimony before the Select Committee has raised doubts about the 

ability of this Directorate to develop comprehensive threat assessments and other-
50

wise carry out its mission. I am aware of no capability that it has to review grant 

applications. Do you believe that the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate should be put in charge of determining the distribution of grants 

to our nation’s first responders? No Response has been recieved.

4. Would it be useful for first responder agencies to know how much funding is 

needed to help prepare for terrorist attack over the next five years, as provided in 

the PREPARE Act? Do we need a national goal to work towards? No Response has 

been recieved.

5. Who should determine the needs of our first responders—analysts in the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate of the Department, or the 

First Responders themselves? No Response has been recieved.

QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES FOR MR. ROBERT LATHAM FROM THE HONORABLE

BENNIE THOMPSON

Question: 1. In your testimony, you requested that the States be provided 

flexibility within DHS guidelines to utilize terrorism preparedness funds, 

including increased authority for the States to approve changes to local 

equipment requests. The PREP ARE Act (H.R 3158) would require States to 

develop a five year plan to meet their needs for essential terrorism preparedness capabilities, and to implement that plan based on the priorities 

of the State and local governments. Would such a system meet your requirements for flexibility, and what other measures would you suggest to 

ensure that States and localities have the flexibility to meet their preparedness needs? . 

Answer: I would urge Congress not to impose additional requirements such as a 

5-year plan upon the States. Currently each state is completing their Strategic Plan 

that wi11 guide priorities for the next 3 years. If Congress desires a more longrange plan then expand the current requirement for a strategic plan from 3 years 

to 5 years. In either case I agree that long-range plans are critical to keep us focused. However, each and every year our priorities change based on the threat environment and our capabilities improve. The flexibility I referred to was based on this 

fact. A three or five year plan can provide a road map but flexibility must be allowed for states to make adjustments in that period of time.

Question: 2. In response to questions from the Subcommittee, you described 

in detail the planning process that the State of Mississippi utilized to quantifY and prioritize homeland security needs throughout the State. In your 

experience, has this been an effective process to ensure that preparedness 

needs are met throughout the State, and are you aware of any other States 

who have adopted your coordination model. In addition, how long did this 

coordination process take, and would you recommend that such a process 

be required for any State requesting homeland security funds from the 

Federal government? 

Answer: For our State, I believed that without local buy-in the whole . initiative 

was doomed to failure. I can say that this process worked for our State. Whether 

or not it will work for other states I can’t say. As I stated during my testimony, 

‘‘one size does not fit all’’. Every community and every state is different. As far as 

the length of time the process took, we began meeting with the various parties long 

before we received any funding to get everyone focused on the strategy. This gave 

us a head start. Once funding was received I met with the parties again to discuss 

the formula we would use for distribution of funds and the application process. After 

that the only challenges were keeping the applicants focused on the state strategy 

and priorities and the administrative burden placed on the state to manage such 

a large number of sub-grants.

Question: 3. H.R. 3266 allows first responder grant funds to be spent on the 

purchase or upgrading of equipment; exercises to strengthen emergency 

response; training in the use of equipment; and training to prevent terrorist attack Conversely, the PREP ARE Act allows first responders to 

spend grant funds as necessary to provide the essential capabilities their 

jurisdiction needs. Isn’t it possible that H.R. 3266 would allow first responders to use funds year after year without meeting an of their preparedness needs? 

Answer: It is certainly possible that H.R. 3266, even with its broad intent, might 

not meet all of the preparedness needs.’ That is why I firmly believe that FLEXIBILITY is the key to meeting the initial and subsequent needs of our first ’ responders. This is a fluid environment with a changing threat. If states and local jurisdictions are not allowed the flexibility to meet the changing threat, it’s quite possible 
51

that our capabilities will not increase at the same rate that the risks and 

vulnerabilities increase.

Question: 4. In addition to providing first responder grant funds, should the 

Department of Homeland Security be giving states and local communities 

guidance in what equipment and training to buy? Isn’t this guidance and 

planning necessary for equipment interoperability? 

Answer: I believe that through the authorized equipment list provided with the 

ODP Grant package that we have the guidance we need. The equipment lists are 

and should be generic because our first responders use different types of self-contained ’ breathing apparatuses as well as other types of equipment. Specifying certain types of equipment would limit accessibility, drive the price up, and require departments to buy equipment they are not necessarily familiar with or care for. 

Interoperability is certainly an issue but I think it really only applies to communications. In this case many of the problems are not equipment interoperability but personnel interoperability—turf wars. Technology is now available to fix the communications equipment interoperability problem and we should focus on this as a fix 

and not rebuild our communication system.

Question: 5. The grant process in H.R. 3266 is open to states, interstate regions, and’intrastate regions. This would potentially require the Under Secretary of Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection to sort 

through hundreds of applications on a regular basis, making detailed 

threat comparisons for each. Does it make sense to streamline the funding 

process to set a number of applicants, each of which builds in regional 

planning to its own process? 

Answer: I think the bigger issue here is making sure whatever process is selected, 

that each state remains the primary point of contact and coordinator. If the current 

role of the state is altered it will undermine everything we have accomplished so 

far. In Mississippi we are doing planning on a regional basis and our response is 

based on a regional concept. If we look beyond our state borders, there should be 

some agency, such as FEMA Regions, as the coordinator to assist with multi-state 

planning.

Question: 6. There have been two rounds of funding through the High 

Threat Urban Area grants. The first round distributed grant funds to seven 

urban areas; the second round sent grant funds to 30 areas in 19 states and 

the Capitol region, including repeat funds to the first seven. Do you anticipate that H.R. 3266 would similarly send the totality of first responder 

grant funding to a few parts of the country? 

Answer: As I stated in my testimony, I believe that if we are to build a comprehensive strategic plan to secure the homeland, it must involve every Citizen, in every 

community, in every county, in every state. Having said that, I also believe that 

there must be continued funding of this initiative in every state, possibly at a reduced level. I also believe, for obvious reasons that based on threat analysis and 

vulnerability future funding must target the higher populated areas. I am totally 

opposed to sending all first responder grant funds to a few areas of the country.

Question: 7. Terrorist threat depends on what a terrorist intends to attack. 

Terrorists intend to attack the United States where the defenses and countermeasures are weakest. Terrorists will presumably know what areas have 

been deemed worthy of receiving grant funds. So, areas that DHS determines to be ‘‘low threat’’ will automatically become higher threat. So 

doesn’t it make sense to ensure that all communities have some baseline 

level of preparedness? 

Answer: I totally agree. My response to the previous question. reinforces my opinion in this matter. As I stated during my testimony ‘‘not every community needs 

a hazmat capability, but every community needs a basic capability’’. I also agree 

that if we focus on the obvious high-threat targets we leave ourselves vulnerable 

in other places making sma1Jer communities that are low-risk, very attractive to 

our enemies.

Question: 8. Under H.R. 3266, grant applications would be rated according 

to the threat faced by a specific grantee—a state, a group of states, or as 

small an entity as a single city. Are the current intelligence and our ability 

to assess the terrorist threat faced by a specific city or county good enough 

to allow numerical comparisons among different grant applicants? 

Answer: Again I think we have to be very careful in the analysis of our information. As good as our intelligence is, it is not perfect. Numerical comparisons obvi-
52

ously unintentiona1Jy create targets of opportunity for our enemies. This supports 

my theory behind building a national capability in every community.

Question: 9. H.R. 3266 requires grant applicants to provide, as a part of the 

application, a ‘‘description of the source of the threat to which the proposed grant relates, including the type of attack for which the applicant is 

preparing for in seeking the grant funding.’’ Do states and regions 

typica1Jy have access to the intelligence necessary to know the exact 

source of a terrorist threat that may affect them? Aren’t a Jot of first responder grants used to improve general emergency readiness rather than 

to improve defenses against a specific type attack? 

Answer: The flow of intelligence information is getting better but it’s not perfect. 

The current challenge is the distribution of information below state level. The intelligence information enables us to better prepare, but as stated in an earlier response, flexibility in use of funds would enable states to adjust our preparedness 

plans and capability as intelligence information changes. Yes, most of the first responder grants are used to improve genera] emergency readiness because our first 

responders have been under funded for so long. We have to develop and enhance 

our response capability first and then focus on deterrence.

Question: 10. Since 9/11, the federal government has spent four to five billion dollars each year on first responder grants. I am unaware of any justification for why this is the right amount-certainly the amount isn’t based 

on an assessment of threat, of vulnerability, or of first responder needs. 

Would you support legislation that tied the first responder budget to some 

assessment of what is needed by the nation’s first responders? 

Answer: I believe that the funding should be driven by some sort of assessment 

of the capability based on the threat and risks. The National Emergency Management Association’s Emergency Management Accreditation Program (EMAP) provides a very valuable tool to evaluate each state’s capability. Expansion of this program to the local level using the NEMA Capability Assessment for Readiness (CAR) 

. could provide the yardstick needed to drive future funding. I also believe that we 

must continue to build an ‘‘all-hazards’’ capability and resist the temptation to focus 

solely on one risk.

Question: 11. Under H.R. 3266, there is no way for a region to know whether 

it will be receiving first responder funds. How would first responder agencies plan their equipment purchases, training, exercises, and other components of emergency readiness without having a sense of what funds would 

be coming? 

Answer: As I have stated before, the fear at the state and local level for our first 

responders is what is the ‘‘Congressional will’’ at it relates to a long-term commitment to this initiative. We are currently taking it a year at a time not knowing 

what funding will be available in out-years. We enter each funding cycle as if it may 

be the last. Accomplishing the goals outlined in our 3 or 5 year plan is totally dependent upon funding.

Question: 12. States and loca] jurisdictions have prepared detailed analyses 

and assessments to meet ODP requirements. Have these assessments been 

valuable to local and state planning efforts, and if so, shouldn’t ODP be involved in grant funding based on those assessments? 

Answer: Yes, these assessments have been a valuable tool to our state, regional, 

and local planning. ODP involvement would be beneficial as long as another level 

of bureaucracy does not further delay the current process. 

QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES FOR MR. ROBERT LATHAM FROM THE HONORABLE JIM

TURNER

Question: 1. A Council on Foreign Relations Task Force found recently that 

there are no agreed upon standards for emergency preparedness and no 

way to. measure how prepared a locality is or should be. Do you feel that 

it is important that there be some way to measure preparedness levels and 

preparedness needs? Do you feel that it is important for us to set a Comprehensive goal for ourselves, by which we can measure progress? 

Answer: Yes I do feel that is important that there be some way to measure preparedness levels and preparedness. As I stated in a previous question the National 

Emergency Management Agency’s (NEMA) Emergency Management. Accreditation 

Program (EMAP) could be enhanced to provide such a tool for measuring the preparedness 1evels and preparedness needs. Use of a tool such as the NEMA Capability Assessment for Readiness (CAR) as a requirement at the local level could pro-
53

vide valuable information to determine a local and state’s preparedness level. Again 

we must focus on an ‘‘all hazards’’ plan.

Question: 2. When states and regions assess their emergency response needs, 

are they normally based on threats (that is, what terrorists want to do to 

me), vulnerabilities (that is, what targets are in the vicinity and how secure are they), or a combination of the two? Shouldn’t a Federal grant program take into account the total risk, by which we can measure progress? 

Answer: Actually we use a combination of threat, vulnerability, and capability to 

determine our needs. I’m not sure that I understand what you mean by ‘‘total risk’’ 

but whatever we do should be based on an assessment of the threat and 

vulnerabilities compared to a jurisdiction’s capability.

Question: 3. Legislation introduced by Chairman Cox proposes to have 

grants reviewed by Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate of the Department. However, past testimony before the Select 

Committee has raised doubts about the ability of this Directorate to develop comprehensive threat assessments and otherwise carry out its mission. I am aware of no capability that it has to review grant applications. 

Do you believe that the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection 

Directorate should be put in charge of determining the distribution of 

grants to our nation’s first responders? 

Answer: I do not believe I am in a position to determine what the capability of the 

IA/IP Directorate may be. Even though I believe that the IA/IP Directorate should 

have a role I do not believe they should be put in charge of determining the distribution of grants to our first responders.

Question: 4. H.R 3266 would formalize a structure for allocating grants according to the assessed threat of terrorist attack. A program like this is already in place, namely the High Threat Urban Area grant program. There 

have been two rounds of funding through the High Threat Urban Area 

grants. The first round distributed grant funds to seven urban areas; the 

second round sent grant funds to 30 areas in 19 states and the Capitol region, including additional funds to the first seven. Do you anticipate that 

H.R. 3266 would similarly send the totality of first responder grant funding 

to only a few parts of the country? 

Answer: I would be opposed to any initiative that targets only certain parts of the 

country. If we expect to build a comprehensive strategy to secure the homeland, 

each and every community of the nation must be a strategic part of this national 

effort.

Question: 5. H.R. 3266 places responsibility for grant management and interaction with grantees under the Office of State and Local Coordination. Are 

you concerned that we will lose the expertise built over the past several 

years at the Office of Domestic Preparedness and FEMA? 

Answer: Because we have had so many natural disasters in Mississippi in the last 

4 years, I have been and continue to be concerned about the future of FEMA and 

the capability we have built nationwide under their leadership. I believe we have 

to be very cautious in our efforts not to undermine the effectiveness of that Agency. 

As the consolidation of grants continues to unfold; I would caution Congress not to 

eliminate those programs that have been so effective such as the Emergency Management Performance Grant (EMPG) managed by FEMA, upon every state has built 

their emergency management capability.

Question: 6. Would it be useful for first responder agencies to know how 

much funding is needed to help prepare for terrorist attack over the next 

five years, as provided in the PREPARE Act? Do we need a national goal 

to work towards? 

Answer: Yes, states and local governments need to know what the future holds if 

we are going to sustain the capability that has been build so far.

Question: 7. Who should determine the needs of our first responders—analysts in the Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection Directorate 

of the Department, or the First Responders themselves? 

Answer: I believe that first responders should decide what they need based on what 

the IA/IP Directorate tells us the threat is.

Æ