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87–017 PDF 2003

HOW EFFECTIVELY IS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

ASSISTING STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

IN PREPARING FOR A BIOLOGICAL, CHEMICAL

OR NUCLEAR ATTACK?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY,

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND

INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JULY 1, 2002

Serial No. 107–210

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAVE WELDON, Florida

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

C.L. ‘‘BUTCH’’ OTTER, Idaho

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

KEVIN BINGER, Staff Director

DANIEL R. MOLL, Deputy Staff Director

JAMES C. WILSON, Chief Counsel

ROBERT A. BRIGGS, Chief Clerk

PHIL SCHILIRO, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY, FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND

INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS

STEPHEN HORN, California, Chairman

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

DOUG OSE, California

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

EX OFFICIO

DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. RUSSELL GEORGE, Staff Director and Chief Counsel

BONNIE HEALD, Depeuty Staff Director

JUSTIN PAULHAMUS, Clerk

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on July 1, 2002 ................................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Berkin, Jeffrey J., Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Milwaukee Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation ......................................................... 23

Buikema, Edward G., Regional Director, Federal Emergency Management

Agency ............................................................................................................ 34

Chapin, John D., Administrator, Wisconsin Department of Public Health . 106

Clarke, David, sheriff, Milwaukee County, WI .............................................. 5

Devries, Mark, commander, Marine Safety Office, Milwaukee, WI ............. 7

Foldy, Seth, M.D., Commissioner of Health, city of Milwaukee, WI ............ 86

Gleason, Edward, administrator, Wisconsin Emergency Management and

Homeland Security advisor to Governor ..................................................... 8

Hartley, Captain Scott, Commanding Officer, National Strike Force Coordinating Center, U.S. Coast Guard .......................................................... 46

Hecker, Jayetta, Director, Physical Infrastructure, General Accounting

Office .............................................................................................................. 61

Norquist, John O., mayor, city of Milwaukee, WI; and Larry Gardner,

chief, Milwaukee Fire Department .............................................................. 2

Schifalacqua, Mariano, commissioner of public works, Department of Public Works, city of Milwaukee, WI ................................................................. 101

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Berkin, Jeffrey J., Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Milwaukee Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation, prepared statement of .................. 25

Buikema, Edward G., Regional Director, Federal Emergency Management

Agency, prepared statement of .................................................................... 37

Foldy, Seth, M.D., Commissioner of Health, city of Milwaukee, WI, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 89

Gleason, Edward, administrator, Wisconsin Emergency Management and

Homeland Security advisor to Governor, prepared statement of .............. 11

Hartley, Captain Scott, Commanding Officer, National Strike Force Coordinating Center, U.S. Coast Guard, prepared statement of .................. 48

Hecker, Jayetta, Director, Physical Infrastructure, General Accounting

Office, prepared statement of ....................................................................... 64

Schifalacqua, Mariano, commissioner of public works, Department of Public Works, city of Milwaukee, WI, prepared statement of ......................... 103

(1)

HOW EFFECTIVELY IS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT ASSISTING STATE AND LOCAL

GOVERNMENTS IN PREPARING FOR A BIOLOGICAL, CHEMICAL OR NUCLEAR ATTACK

MONDAY, JULY 1, 2002

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY, FINANCIAL

MANAGEMENT AND INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Milwaukee, WI.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:10 a.m., in the

Milwaukee Common Council Chambers, Milwaukee City Hall, Milwaukee, WI, Hon. Steve Horn (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Horn, Kleczka and Petri.

Staff present: J. Russell George, staff director and chief counsel;

Bonnie Heald, deputy staff director; Justin Paulhamus, clerk; Chris

Barkley, staff assistant; Michael Sazonov, Sterling Bentley, Joe

DiSilvio and Yigal Kerszenbaum, interns.

Mr. HORN. It is a great pleasure to be in the State of Wisconsin.

I am just going to give you some background before the Mayor

will give the major presentation.

This is the Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial

Management and Intergovernmental Relations and we are in order

and we are delighted to have two fine Members of Congress in Wisconsin.

On September 11, 2001, the world witnessed the most devastating attacks ever committed on U.S. soil. Despite the damage and

enormous loss of life, the attacks failed to cripple this Nation. To

the contrary, Americans have never been more united in their fundamental belief in freedom and in their willingness to protect that

freedom. The diabolical nature of those attacks and then the deadly

release of anthrax sent a loud and clear message to all Americans.

We must be prepared for the unexpected. We must have the mechanisms in place to protect this Nation and its people from further

attempts to cause massive destruction.

The aftermath of September 11th clearly demonstrated the need

for adequate communications systems and rapid deployment of

well-trained emergency personnel. Yet despite billions of dollars in

spending on Federal emergency programs, there remain serious

doubts as to whether the Nation is equipped to handle a massive

chemical, biological or nuclear attack.

2

Today, the subcommittee will examine how effectively Federal,

State and local agencies are working together to prepare for such

emergencies. We want those who live in the great State of Wisconsin and the good people of Milwaukee to know that they can rely

on these systems, should the need arise.

We are fortunate to have witnesses today whose valuable experience and insight will help the subcommittee better understand the

needs of those on the front lines. We want to hear about their capabilities and their challenges and we want to know what the Federal

Government can do to help. We welcome all of our witnesses and

we look forward to their testimony.

Since we are an investigative committee from the full Committee

on Government Reform, we do swear in all our witnesses, so if all

the witnesses that are going to be here and any assistance of yours,

the Clerk will put them in the hearing record. So if you will stand

and raise your right hand.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. HORN. The clerk will note that all the witnesses affirmed the

oath, and we will begin with the Mayor of Milwaukee, The Honorable John Norquist. We are honored that with all the things going

on in Milwaukee, that he would spend some time with this subcommittee. Thank you, Mayor.

STATEMENT OF JOHN O. NORQUIST, MAYOR, CITY OF MILWAUKEE, WI; AND LARRY GARDNER, CHIEF, MILWAUKEE FIRE

DEPARTMENT

Mayor NORQUIST. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My mic seems to

work pretty well. [Laughter.]

I want to welcome you to Milwaukee, along with Congressman

Petri, who comes here quite often—it is on his way home—and of

course our own Congressman, who we are very proud of, Jerry

Kleczka.

In the short time that I have, I wanted to affirm the importance

of local responders. We all saw dramatically on the horrible day on

September 11th, how New York City firefighters, police officials,

health officials and other municipal officials were the key element

in responding to the immediate crisis.

A smaller, but nevertheless important, effort was made by communities around the country—Milwaukee was no exception—where

we had firefighters, police officers, sheriff’s department personnel

and health officials responding to fears of anthrax contamination.

We had 320 calls and 74 that we had to do tests for, it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for various law enforcement agencies

to deal with this. For the most part, the community and the workers involved did their work cheerfully—I think in every case—did

it with a sense of determination. We trained people, our health department trained people. At the post office when the scare happened, it was terrifying, when anthrax was found in the post office

in Indianapolis and Kansas City, we thought it was very likely it

would come into our post office and our health department personnel quickly, along with our fire department, met with and trained

employees of the Federal post office.

We were fortunate in that in the case of our water supply, which

water supplies were an immediate concern across the country when

3

you are dealing with terrorism. We had already done a lot of preparation for preparing our water utility because of an issue here that

had to do with fishermen who wanted public access in and around

our water plant, and so because of that, we had already put a lot

of security protocol in place and were well along on that. And that

is an example to other water utilities in the country because we

have moved so far with it.

Our city health department pioneered something called ServeNet

which tracks and reports communicable diseases at area hospitals,

clinics and health departments. This is a communication issue and

our health department has done this with tremendous cooperation

from other parts of the health care network.

These are things that do not have to cost a lot of money. These

are procedures that can be put in place that just make common

sense and are useful for other aspects of life other than just dealing

with a terrorism crisis. And I would encourage you and your committee and Federal agencies to look at this ServeNet network that

has been set up by our health department as an example for the

rest of the country.

Cooperation is important. I think that local Federal officials have

been very cooperative, have tried to cooperate effectively with our

fire department, health department, police department, sheriff’s office and other agencies. But this is something that can always improve. FBI offices have a tendency to change their leadership personnel maybe more often than they should. That can lead to communication problems when that happens.

Finally, I wanted to mention funding concerns. The last President was a Governor, the current President is a Governor. It is natural for them to place great value in State government and State

government does have great value. But in dealing with these crises,

the immediate responders are local and the Federal Government

needs to make sure that there is not a tendency just to spread

money thinly across political jurisdictions instead of focusing it on

places that can really matter. There are only two top level labs in

the State of Wisconsin. One the State runs in Madison and the

other is run by our health department. Trying to replicate lab resources in small communities that can be served by those in larger

communities is something that you really need to be careful about.

It should not be just about making everybody feel like they have

been treated fairly. It is more important to make sure that the

emergency response is effective.

And finally, on one issue that has to do with—not with us locally

in terms of a program, but it has to do with your own agency. The

Centers for Disease Control has a very effective relationship with

health departments across the country, certainly our health department and also, for that matter, the State of Wisconsin’s health facilities. The CDC tends to be eager to get information and to share

it. They tend to be less arrogant than other agencies, maybe that

is because they are so focused on disease. They have been humbled

by the fact that disease can spread very quickly if there is not a

good communication network.

I would encourage you to consider very carefully whether it is a

good idea to put the CDC in the new Department of Homeland Security, and if you ultimately think it is a good idea to put it in

4

there, I would be very careful to make sure that its ability to communicate and share information with local health agencies is retained. My own view is that it would probably be better to leave

it in the Health and Human Services Department and set up some

kind of protocol of communication with Homeland Security, because

the relationships that have been built up over the years with

health departments are so valuable you do not want to wreck them.

With that, I am going to now introduce our fire chief, who was

not formally on the program, but played a key role in the response

to September 11th and is one of the key actors in all this. When

we have an emergency in Milwaukee, it is the fire department usually that is in there first and leaves at the very end.

So with that, here is Chief Larry Gardner.

Mr. GARDNER. Thank you.

I am honored to testify before the Committee on Government Reform, Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial Management and Intergovernmental Relations today. My name is Larry

Gardner and I am Chief of the Milwaukee Fire Department.

My department provides services; emergency services that include fire education, suppression, emergency medical service, a

local heavy urban rescue team and a regional hazardous materials

team.

First, I would like to thank the committee for its continued interest and support in the fight against terrorism. I would also like to

thank you for making the resources available to better prepare us

for the challenges of today’s domestic and international terrorist

events.

The tragedies of the attack on the World Trade Center in New

York and the events of Oklahoma City opened the avenues of opportunity for improved level of preparedness. Quoting a 1997 letter

to Mayor Norquist from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, ‘‘In light of recent events and the increased access to the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical materials, there is a

growing concern about the potential for terrorist incidents involving weapons of mass destruction. Recent Federal legislation authorize the Federal Government to offer State and local jurisdictions

training to help the emergency personnel to respond to potential

terrorist incidents involving such agencies. Initial Federal efforts

will target 27 of the Nation’s largest cities and will involve a selfassessment by each city of the current terrorist response capabilities and training requirements and a cooperative Federal, State

and local approach to meeting identified needs.’’

Although this letter was written in 1997, the problem of terrorism is still here and even more punctuated today. Let me tell you

that the city of Milwaukee has taken advantage of the training and

equipment that was made available through the Nunn-LugarDomenici Act. Milwaukee has taken full advantage of implementing the MMST or MMRS system, as it is today. And as every day

passes, we see how the rules of the game for preparedness change.

This is why we must continue to pursue all the resource opportunities for continued training of our emergency response personnel in

the event of future terrorist attacks. I personally believe the city

of Milwaukee is far better prepared than it would have been if

these funds had not been made available.

5

We must continue to receive these funds at the local level to progressively provide for training, exercising and equipping cities with

the latest in medical supplies and technological advances. It is important that these funds get to metropolitan communities such as

Milwaukee.

Here are some of the examples of the cooperative efforts Milwaukee Fire Department has been involved with since September 11,

2001: We have responded to the anthrax response and provided

public training. We have provided countywide risk assessment and

training with law enforcement, media and public health. We have

been involved at the State level with our regional hazardous materials team in training regional fire departments in awareness procedures for terrorist activities. We have trained and worked with

county employees regarding terrorism awareness training. We have

worked with—and one of the handouts I have for you is dated May

2002—we have worked with the city employees involving terrorism

awareness training. We have also worked with training our heavy

urban rescue team for structural collapse because of the incidents

that we have become so aware of from the city of New York. The

fire, health, police and public works, employee relations and sheriff’s departments have worked in cooperation to increase the level

of awareness through the outreach training to better prepare the

different tiers of government.

What do we need? We need to make our local efforts as successful as it possibly can be. Incident command training, unified training, we need to continue to work on that. Planning to optimize communications to improve wireless accessibility. Additional training

at all levels of government. Seamless grant applications and grants

that go directly to the metropolitan communities. Enhanced decontamination capabilities. In our collective efforts to combat terrorism, we have expanded many local resources as well as the Federal

financial help. We need to continue to refine our efforts and get the

money to the local levels.

With that, I thank you and I am available for any questions.

Mr. HORN. Thank you. We are going to go through a few in this

area of law enforcement issues and then our colleagues here can

ask questions on that.

So we will now have David Clarke, the Sheriff of Milwaukee

County. Thank you for coming.

STATEMENT OF DAVID CLARKE, SHERIFF, MILWAUKEE

COUNTY, WI

Mr. CLARKE. Thank you, sir. Good morning, everybody.

I am the newly appointed Sheriff, having been appointed in

March of this year, but I do have somewhat of an advantage in

that in my previous position as commanding officer of the Intelligence Division of the Milwaukee Police Department, my unit was

responsible for the very thing that we’re talking about today. So

while I have limited training and limited knowledge in that area,

I do have some.

The thing that is most critical to me and to us at the law enforcement level is the information sharing. I have heard Tom Rich, Governor Tom Rich, Homeland Security Director, and U.S. Attorney

General John Ashcroft say many times that homeland security is

6

a local issue, and it really is. The information sharing for us is critical at all levels.

We still need to work at tearing down some of these jurisdictional boundaries, just in terms of—you know, not our responsibilities, but in terms of information sharing. One of the areas that I

would like to see improved on is the security clearance process,

which is a very cumbersome process to go through, to be able to

get that clearance to receive a higher level of confidential information. I understand the importance of the confidentiality of this information; however, I think for the heads of agencies, like myself

and chiefs of police, there could be a more streamlined process so

that we have—so that our counterparts at the various levels; for

instance, Jeff Burke and Dave Mitchell with the FBI, Dan Jones

with the local ATF office, John Bergland of the Secret Service, people that I interact with frequently, so that they can actually share

that information with me, with the understanding that it is sensitive and not everybody needs to know it, but I think the head of

the agency does, especially with my countywide jurisdiction. So I

would like to see some improvements there.

The other area of concern for me is we do not really seem to have

an infrastructure in place with which to share information and we

are relying on faxes, we are relying on phone calls. The best example I can give that we have here in the county in terms of information sharing is with the HIDTA organization, the high intensity

drug trafficking area, where we do have an infrastructure utilizing

the computer, that many agencies, different jurisdictions, different

levels of jurisdiction have access to. Of course it is not open to everybody, you need certain clearance and passwords to get into certain information. However, that infrastructure that was set up for

the information—and that is why it was set up the way it was, for

information sharing at different levels because you have Federal

involvement, you have State involvement and you have local involvement and so there is a central point that people can go to, to

obtain information as well as disseminate information.

So, like I said, having jurisdiction for the entire county, I think

the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office would be the most reasonable place to start in terms of being the central focal point for receiving the information from the various levels. And it would be my

responsibility to disseminate that amongst the municipal agencies

within the County of Milwaukee.

That is really all I have to add at this point. Thank you.

Mr. HORN. Well, thank you. That is very helpful for us and you

have made some good points there. And other sheriffs such as you

and other responders certainly agree with what you are saying. We

will get to that in a few minutes.

Right now, I would like to have another from the State of Wisconsin here. Why do we not have the Commander Mark R. Devries,

the Marine Safety Office in Milwaukee. So if we could get that view

on emergency response, it would be helpful. Mr. Devries.

Mr. DEVRIES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I understand, would

you like us, the Coast Guard, to present our oral statement at this

point? If so, my counterpart, Captain Hartley, will be delivering

that.

7

Mr. HORN. Go ahead. I just want to see the locals and then go

right to the Federal.

Captain HARTLEY. Mr. Chairman, my name is Scott Hartley and

I am here to represent the National Strike Force, which is also an

entity in the Coast Guard, but I was going to provide a national

perspective on that.

Mr. HORN. Sure. I just wanted the local points here, because

some of our colleagues might have to go to other things, so we

would like to get the view locally and then get some questions and

then get to various Federal.

STATEMENT OF MARK DEVRIES, COMMANDER, MARINE

SAFETY OFFICE, MILWAUKEE, WI

Mr. DEVRIES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I will go ahead and try

to share a local perspective.

As the Commanding Officer of the Marine Safety Office here in

Milwaukee, I have the responsibility for eastern Wisconsin, stretching up through Green Bay and above Washington Island and back

south to the Illinois border. In my capacity as the commanding officer, I am also the Federal on-scene coordinator under the National

Contingency Plan for the response to oil and hazardous material

incidents.

We feel that the approach to weapons of mass destruction events

nearly always will include an incident which will be either a chemical or hazardous material type response. And under the National

Contingency Plan, I will be responsible for working with my partners in the State and local government as well as the other Federal

agencies as a coordinator in forming a response to an incident such

as that.

Under the National Contingency Plan, we operate in the incident

command system with a unified command. Wisconsin brings an

extra added dimension, which I am quite pleased to say I think

works really well, and that is the fact that Wisconsin is a home

rule State. The result of that is that I believe in the different areas

that I have been stationed throughout the Nation, I find here in

Wisconsin that there is responsibility and authority placed at the

local level for government services that results in an outstanding

participation, wonderful relationships and great interest in planning and actually preparing and executing responses. As such, we

have wonderful participation in our area committee, which is responsible for the area plan which is the framework which we respond to these incidents under. The relationships that we have

built since we brought the added security dimension to our response network has only grown further with our relationship with

the FBI, the Sheriff’s Office in the form of the emergency management side of the Sheriff’s Office.

The primary fact that what we have here is a coordination type

role in the State locally, we work the contingency plans, we exercise them; in 2000, we held a weapons of mass destruction exercise

which involved the participation for planning and actually executing the exercise with the county emergency management. We participated in that exercise, we had the FBI and the whole response

network that became part of that.

8

We just recently had a triennial exercise under the National Contingency Plan which requires us to exercise our ability to respond

under the area plan. And interestingly enough, including the Y2K

events, all of our events have been operated and set up out of the

emergency operations center of the county. That in itself represents

I think a strong relationship between the response—the local response community.

I will stop at that point and be glad to take any questions.

Mr. HORN. Thank you. We will now have one more local and in

this group—and this is the first time we have tried these sorts of

things, to try to get groups and then move to the next one. And

let me ask about the Administrator for Wisconsin Emergency Management, get that on the table, Edward Gleason.

STATEMENT OF EDWARD GLEASON, ADMINISTRATOR, WISCONSIN EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AND HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISOR TO GOVERNOR

Mr. GLEASON. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and

members of this committee. I appreciate the opportunity to testify

this morning. My name is Ed Gleason, I serve as the Administrator

of Wisconsin Emergency Management, as Homeland Security Advisor to Governor Scott McCallum and also as Co-Chair of the Governor’s Task Force on Terrorism Preparedness.

Here in Wisconsin, we did not wake up on September 12 and decide that we needed to do something. We have been working to

raise our preparedness levels for the past 5 years. We have two cities in Wisconsin, Milwaukee and Madison, among the 120 cities nationwide that have received Federal assistance to prepare for terrorism as a result of the passage of the Nunn-Lugar Act.

This assistance has helped these two metropolitan areas considerably; however, it left the rest of the State less than prepared.

Something else was needed to reach our cities and counties that lie

outside the major urban areas. In 2000, the U.S. Department of

Justice and the Federal Emergency Management Agency broadened the program and released equipment and planning grants to

include these areas.

Counties that applied for the funding were required to conduct

threat and vulnerability assessments of their jurisdictions, determine what their local capabilities are to meet these threats and to

identify future equipment needs.

Using these assessments, last October, Wisconsin became the

tenth State in the Nation to complete the Statewide strategic plan

for domestic preparedness. This freed up $3.8 million of fiscal year

1999, 2000 and 2001 funding.

Our Statewide assessment detailed a need for over $16 million

though, for essential equipment, so you can see that there clearly

is not enough money at this time. The fact that these funds have

come as 100 percent funding and no match is required has helped

our communities considerably. We do believe at a time when we

are struggling to build capacity, it is extremely helpful not to be

challenged by identifying a requisite match.

A significant problem with these funds, however, was the lack of

flexibility in spending the allocated dollars. The Office of Justice

Programs has an Authorized Equipment List that is somewhat limVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:20 May 22, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00012 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\87017.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
9

ited. And when you want to deviate from this list, it requires a detailed justification that consumes considerable time.

It has been a demanding grant to administer, as evidenced by

how long it has taken to get the dollars down to the streets. In

Wisconsin, we have expended about 50 percent of those funds, 95

percent of those are allocated to local communities. However, our

spending rate, I would dare venture is probably ahead of the rest

of the Nation. Flexibility should be the key in designing future

grant programs.

We have just on Friday, submitted our 2002 grant. The Justice

Department has expanded the eligible areas under this grant program. We will receive nearly $6 million for program and exercise

needs. This will help considerably in our preparedness efforts, but

still our needs are greater than the funds available. We believe

that the 2003 First Responder Initiative dollars proposed by President Bush will further help our preparedness efforts.

The First Responder Initiative should help immeasurably in raising our preparedness levels. However, probably more appropriately

the name for this initiative should be emergency responder initiative vice first responder, to broaden the eligibility for those who

could receive these funds. By most definitions, first responders are

law enforcement, fire service and EMS, emergency medical services, personnel who are often the first to respond and enter harm’s

way. They do need and deserve, rightly deserve, our highest effort

to get them this protection. Yet, there are a cadre of disciplines

who may also be thrust in harm’s way and we need to be able to

provide them with the appropriate equipment and the flexibility to

do so. These response disciplines could be public health professionals, public works personnel and emergency management personnel. All may need consideration for this funding and I suggest

you leave it to the Governors to designate who should be eligible

for these funds.

Two weeks ago, I was present to hear Governor Ridge’s remarks

to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Madison. The mayors asked if

he would provide block grants directly to the cities to help them in

their preparedness efforts. I strongly support his response, that the

grants should not be block grants to municipalities, rather they

should be provided to the States through the Governors. I believe

that we need to do this if we hope to build a Statewide system that

can complement our national system. I believe block grants tend to

create islands of response capabilities, that may not add to the system as a whole.

It will also be tough in these difficult financial times for the

State and local governments to provide a hard match to these 2003

funds. We would like to see no match at all or a recognition for the

efforts as the appropriate match for these funds.

Last October, FEMA led a team of Federal agencies to Wisconsin

to jointly assess with us our terrorism preparedness response capability in 18 critical areas. We arrived at more than 40 action items

that when implemented will improve Wisconsin’s preparedness in

response capabilities.

A few examples of these action items include the following: Promoting incident command systems to manage disaster response;

strengthening intrastate mutual aid; improving the interoperability

10

of communications; further strengthening lab capabilities; and

seeking the designation of a full time civil support team comprised

of 22 National Guard soldiers trained and equipped to face chemical, biological and radiological threats. There are 32 States in the

Nation with these teams and we strongly feel that this capability

should reside also in Wisconsin.

I would like to conclude with a brief comment on the proposed

Department of Homeland Security. Governor McCallum and I support the President’s proposal. We believe it is a sound concept to

tackle the challenges our Nation faces. I offer this perspective as

a State director of emergency management and as a retired Coast

Guard officer.

I appreciate the opportunity provided today. As a Nation, we

have much work to do and the States appreciate the leadership of

the President and Congress in providing funding to help us get

there.

I ask that you continue to be flexible in the administration of

these funds as we collectively work to make our Nation better prepared.

Thank you.

Mr. HORN. Thank you. We appreciate those ideas.

And now we will move to the Federal portion of the law enforcement issues as we have had at the local and State level. We will

have Jeffrey J. Berkin, the Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Milwaukee Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gleason follows:]

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STATEMENT OF JEFFREY J. BERKIN, ASSISTANT SPECIAL

AGENT IN CHARGE, MILWAUKEE DIVISION, FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

Mr. BERKIN. Good morning, Chairman Horn, thank you. Good

morning, distinguished members of the Wisconsin delegation. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to speak to the

FBI in Wisconsin’s efforts in the area of weapons of mass destruction preparedness and response.

Basically the focus of FBI efforts to address WMD threats is on

prevention. We view prevention as having a number of components

or elements, if you like. That is because we view prevention as a

defense in depth where we try to have a series of barriers to anyone who would do us harm.

The first layer perhaps is intelligence acquisition. That is the collection of intelligence information from our own human and technical sources, from liaison with our Federal, State and local partners and from our foreign liaison partners.

Once that intelligence is acquired, we engage in intelligence

analysis. That, together with the collection, gives us the nature of

the threat.

From there, we go to information sharing and I will speak a little

bit more about that in a moment.

We also assist with physical security at target sites, particularly

for specific events, to try to help harden those potential targets. We

assist in addressing information assurance; that is, the security of

information systems, computer systems, from the cyber threat.

We also assist in addressing personnel security issues, not replacing the private sector or local security efforts, but where someone comes to a heightened level of attention because they provide

some indicia of suspicion, we can address that as well.

And last, of course, we engage in an aggressive and thorough investigation of identified threats to deter, to disrupt and to defeat

terrorist operations and efforts against us.

For a moment, I would like to speak about information sharing,

because that is a very important topic and one which has received

a lot of notice of late. Here in Wisconsin, we engage in information

sharing through a variety of mechanisms and I would like to share

those with you briefly.

First and foremost is our Joint Terrorism Task Force. Twelve different agencies, State, Federal and local are represented on that

task force, which is housed and led by the FBI. It is located not

only here in Milwaukee but also in Madison to provide adequate

Statewide coverage. These law enforcement agencies that work side

by side with us, of course, have access to the information that we

have, so that they in turn can take it back to their parent agencies

and assist in the dissemination of intelligence information.

We distribute information via computer systems through a number of ways: NLETS, the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, sends teletype warning messages to every police

department and sheriff’s office that is equipped to receive them.

LEO, Law Enforcement Online, an FBI sponsored information system, similarly sends out threat information and intelligence information. Those accounts are available to local law enforcement officers who care to have them. WILENET, a Wisconsin-specific Law

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Enforcement Network. We obtained authorization to input threat

information into WILENET, again for those departments which

perhaps have access to it but not to the other systems. We have

a program known as InfraGard, which is a private/public partnership with private industry, designed primarily to protect private

corporations against cyber threats. We have another program

called ANSIR primarily focused on counter-espionage and counterterrorism. And perhaps one of the more important ones is management representation at public forums, for particularly law enforcement forums, where management distributes information at venues

such as the monthly meetings of the Wisconsin chiefs of police, the

Milwaukee County chiefs of police, Waukesha County chiefs of police and the like. We go to these meetings and we always bring up

information when it is relevant.

Of course, beyond prevention, we address the response to a terrorist event, and we do that through training, through liaison,

through national FBI resources and assets such as the National

Hazardous Materials Response Unit, Hostage Rescue Team, the

National Infrastructure Protection Center and other national resources which we can bring to bear here in Wisconsin if we become

overwhelmed in terms of resources. We also, of course, develop response plans, so that we have a blueprint to follow in the event

that something does occur. And again, last, but not least, investigation and prosecution, which is our core competency, our traditional

function. We of course perform that function here in Wisconsin as

well.

But the point I would like to make is that really our primary emphasis is on prevention and I have given you some of the ways in

which we attempt to successfully address that.

That concludes my oral presentation this morning. Thank you.

Mr. HORN. Well, thank you, I appreciate it.

We will now get a view of the Federal Emergency Management

Agency through the region and to tell us all about that, Edward G.

Buikema, the Regional Director. And we thank you for coming over

here to give us some of your take on this.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Berkin follows:]

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STATEMENT OF EDWARD G. BUIKEMA, REGIONAL DIRECTOR,

FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY

Mr. BUIKEMA. Thank you and good morning, Mr. Chairman and

members of the Wisconsin delegation. I am Ed Buikema, Director

of Region V of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

FEMA Region V includes the States of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin representing a population of

approximately 51 million people with the majority residing in

urban areas. We have significant disaster activity within the region, having administered 48 Presidential Disaster Declarations

within the last 5 years, with many events impacting multiple

States. Presently, four of Region V’s six States have active major

Presidential Disaster Declarations. Illinois’ declaration is for high

winds, tornadoes and flooding. Indiana, Michigan and Minnesota

have declarations for flooding.

To maintain the readiness for large scale disasters including acts

of terrorism, regional Federal agencies and the States turn to the

Federal Response Plan. Under the Federal Response Plan, FEMA

coordinates a disaster response system that involves up to 26 Federal agencies and 12 emergency support functions. Each emergency

support function has a lead Federal agency. Regionally, these emergency support functions have been called into action during such

disasters as the midwest flood of 1993 and the Red River flood of

1997.

Other regional Federal agencies and our State partners meet at

least quarterly to share planning efforts, exercise preparedness and

response plans and devote attention to emergency response coordination during specific types of natural and manmade disasters.

The region takes an active role in preparing for a response to a

terrorism event. FEMA’s responsibility is to coordinate Federal, regional and State terrorism-related planning, training and exercise

activities. This includes supporting the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici program in which 36 Region V communities participate. We are also

working with States to build response capability and keep them informed of Federal initiatives as well as participate in the Statesponsored conferences, training exercises, task forces and workshops.

Just last month, the region hosted a senior leaders homeland security summit which brought together selected officials and representatives of the first responder community throughout our

States. The summit provided a forum for discussions of issues relating to the fire service and law enforcement, funding for planning, training, equipment and exercises, border issues, mutual aid

agreements and other issues pertinent to homeland security.

All of the States in Region V have implemented proactive and aggressive actions in response to the terrorism threats that have

emerged since September 11th.

Many States have committed substantial amounts of staff and

their own financial resources toward preparing for weapons of mass

destruction events. All States have designated homeland security

directors.

Groundwork has been laid or accelerated to develop interstate

and intrastate mutual aid agreements. Specialized response teams

are being formed. Legislation is being enacted. Training is being

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conducted and equipment is being purchased. State government

has spent millions of dollars directly responding to homeland security needs and the anthrax crisis.

While much has been done, we have only begun to scratch the

surface of what needs to be done. We have identified many shortfalls in our Nation’s ability to respond to weapons of mass destruction events. These shortfalls must be addressed. Homeland security

initiatives must be sustainable and will require an ongoing commitment of Federal, State and local resources.

FEMA has recently realigned to establish the Office of National

Preparedness at the headquarters and regional level. The creation

of this office is intended to address a long-recognized problem, the

critical need that exists in this country for a central coordination

point for the wide range of Federal programs dealing with terrorism preparedness.

I would like to briefly discuss the first responder initiative. To support first responders, the President has requested $3.5 billion

in the 2003 budget. These funds would help plan, train, acquire

needed equipment and conduct exercises in preparation for terrorist attacks and other emergencies.

Right now, FEMA is developing a streamlined and accountable

procedure that would speed the flow of funds to the first responder

community. Specifically, the funds would be used to support the development of comprehensive response plans for terrorist incidents,

to purchase equipment needed to respond effectively, including a

better interoperable communications system, the provide training

for responding to terrorist incidents and for coordinated regular exercise programs.

The President is requesting funds in the 2002 spring supple- mental to support the first responder initiative, including $175 million to be provided to State and local governments to upgrade and

in some cases to develop comprehensive emergency operations

plans. These comprehensive plans would form the foundation for

the work to be done in 2003 to prepare first responders for terrorist

attacks.

FEMA has held listening sessions throughout the country with

first responders and emergency managers at every level to solicit

their ideas on the design of the grant program process. In addition,

we are working to resolve other issues critical to the success of this

initiative: National standards for compatible, interoperable equipment. A national mutual aid system. Personal protective equipment for first responders. And national standards for training and

exercises.

In addition to the right equipment, planning capabilities and

training, first responders have been telling us that they need a single point of contact in Federal Government. In our view, it is absolutely essential that the responsibility for pulling together and coordinating the myriad of Federal programs designed to help local

and State responders an emergency managers to respond to terrorism be situated in a single agency. That is why we are so excited

about the President’s calling for the creation of the Department of

Homeland Security.

The functions that FEMA performs will be a key part of the mission of the new Department of Homeland Security. The new deVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:20 May 22, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00039 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\87017.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
36

partment will strengthen our ability to carry out important activities such as building the capacity of State and local emergency response personnel to respond to emergencies and disasters of all

kinds. The new department will administer Federal grants under

the first responder initiative as well as grant programs managed

by the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and

Human Services and FEMA. A core part of the Department’s emergency preparedness and response function will be built directly on

the foundation established by FEMA. It will continue FEMA’s efforts to reduce the loss of life and property and protect our Nation’s

institutions from all types of hazards through a comprehensive

risk-based all hazards emergency management program of preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery.

By bringing other Federal emergency response assets such as the

Nuclear Emergency Search Team, Radiological Emergency Response Team, Radiological Assistance Program, National Pharmaceutical Stockpile, the National Disaster Medical System and the

Metropolitan Medical Response System together with FEMA’s response capabilities, the new department will allow for better coordination than the current situation in which response assets are

separated in several departments.

Also the Citizens Corps program is part of the President’s new

Freedom Corps initiative. The initiative brings together local government, law enforcement, educational institutions, the private sector, faith-based groups and volunteers into a cohesive community

resource. Citizen Corps is coordinated nationally by FEMA, which

also provides training standards, general information and materials. We also will identify additional volunteer programs and initiatives that support the goals of the Citizens Corps.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify here today on the efforts

of the emergency management community. I will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Mr. HORN. Thank you. And the last speaker on the emergency

response issues and the law enforcement issues is Captain Scott E.

Hartley, Commanding Officer, National Strike Force Coordinating

Center, U.S. Coast Guard.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Buikema follows:]

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STATEMENT OF CAPTAIN SCOTT HARTLEY, COMMANDING OFFICER, NATIONAL STRIKE FORCE COORDINATING CENTER,

U.S. COAST GUARD

Captain HARTLEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, distinguished panel members and the guests that we have here today.

It is a pleasure to appear before you today.

I am the Commander of the National Strike Force and I have

brought along the local Coast Guard rep and he stole some of my

thunder, but he did well.

I would like to begin by telling you about the National Contingency Plan and National Response System.

The National Contingency Plan is a result of the Clean Water

Act of 1972 and the National Response System is a network of Federal, State and local agencies with extensive capabilities responsible for planning for and responding to oil and hazardous material

releases under the National Contingency Plan.

This National Response System activates when notification is

made to the National Response Center, which is also a Coast

Guard entity, or any of the involved agencies. And a key person in

the National Response System is the Federal on-scene coordinator

or FOSC and that is what Commander Devries is here in the Eastern Region of Wisconsin.

Under the National Contingency Plan, it is Commander Devries’

job as the FOSC to lead local preparedness efforts in coordination

with State and local agencies and private industry, and provide the

Federal lead in an actual response.

During an actual incident, Commander Devries, as the FOSC,

would set up an organization utilizing the incident command system, incorporating Federal, State, local and private resources into

a focused and efficient response structure.

As part of the unified command in this response organization,

the Coast Guard FOSC works closely with officials such as the fire

chief, State officials such as director of response in the Department

of Natural Resources and the responsible party, to protect life,

property and the environment.

When needed, the FOSC can access the Oil Spill Liability Trust

Fund for oil spills or the Superfund for hazardous material releases

to fund a response anywhere in the country. In addition to local response assets, the FOSC also has access to Federal resources such

as the National Strike Force, and that is where we come in.

The National Strike Force is one of five special teams designated

in the National Contingency Plan. We have three strike teams in

New Jersey, Alabama and California that are trained and equipped

to conduct hazard assessment, source control, contamination reduction, release counter-measures, mitigation, decontamination and response management activities, all to support the FOSC during an

incident.

Each strike team has 37 active, 50 reserve and one civilian and

are supported by the National Strike Force Coordination Center in

North Carolina, which is also home to the National Preparedness

for Response Exercise Program, the Public Information Assist

Team and the National Inventory Loss Response Resources. All

three teams work, train and respond together and are completely

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interoperable and we are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and

we can get there by land, sea or air.

Because of our role in supporting the FOSC during a major incident, we are often a participant in many of the local preparedness

efforts and provide training in incident response throughout the

country.

The FOSC is also supported for planning, coordination and interoperability by representatives of 16 Federal agencies and inclusive

of States at the regional level by regional response teams, which

in turn have a mirror organization for national coordination, planning, policies and interagency coordination known as the National

Response Team.

The Environmental Protection Agency is the chair and the Coast

Guard is the vice chair of the National Response Team. All of these

relationships, roles, capabilities and responsibilities are outlined in

the National Contingency Plan.

The National Response System is a valuable time-tested response

mechanism. All the authorities necessary to respond to an incident

are pre-designated and pre-authorized and this is in keeping with

the Presidential Decision Directives 39 and 62, which direct the

Federal Government to use existing systems for weapons of mass

destruction rather than creating new systems.

The National Response System should be a key component of the

new Department of Homeland Security and should reside in the

Preparedness and Response Directorate.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify here today and Commander Devries and I would be happy to answer any questions you

might have.

[The prepared statement of Captain Hartley follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you. And now I am going to ask my colleagues

to pose some questions and we will have in the next group, the

health-related, and we will have as the wrap-up, which we often

do, the General Accounting Office, because they look at it with 50

different studies they have done on this. And like them, if we add

any little pieces through the door, we want to make sure that we

pull it all together. So Director Hecker will be after the health. So

right now, we are going to have the law enforcement, the emergency response questions from our colleagues.

And we have the representative here from Milwaukee. You have

a good part of Milwaukee, I think.

Mr. KLECZKA. Mr. Chairman, I have the entire city of Milwaukee.

Mr. HORN. Well, it is great. So go ahead.

Mr. KLECZKA. First of all, Mr. Chairman, let me thank you for

including Milwaukee in your field hearings. I think as we have

heard already from our law enforcement officials, we are working

toward providing a very coordinated effort for the homeland security of not only the Milwaukee area but the State of Wisconsin.

I want to thank our Mayor for his testimony today and want to

acknowledge the President of the Common Council, Alderman

Pratt, who is here and sitting behind him is the newest council

member for the city of Milwaukee, Alderman Dudzik. So gentlemen, welcome also.

Mr. Chairman, I think we all know what Congress has to do to

provide for homeland security. I think your hearings around the

country will enable us to know what the local concerns are. You

know, when Commander Devries was talking and mentioned Y2K,

I almost had all but forgotten the big problems we anticipated with

Y2K. But as I sat here and thought about it for awhile, that put

into place a lot of the coordination which we can use and build

upon today. It was a very serious threat, one which did not develop

into anything serious, and thank God for that.

However, the President has provided a budget request for imme- diate response in the amount of $3.5 billion and as I look over that

response, I happen to agree with some of the people who testified,

like Mr. Gleason, who indicated that the first responders are not

only the police and the fire departments around the country, but

there are other health departments, health personnel and others

who should be included.

But as I look at that, Mr. Chairman, and I would like the Mayor to respond, of the $3.5 billion requested, which I assume Congress

will go along with, 25 percent of those funds can be left with the

State to be used at their discretion. As I see the State role here,

it is one of more coordination. They are not the people who are

going to buy the communications systems, they are not the people

who are going to buy the equipment that might be necessary, and

so my question to you is—and I know the Council of Mayors has

also made a statement on this—I do not know if it is wise for us

to give the State the authority to retain 25 percent of these funds.

As you know, there was a large tobacco settlement for the State

of Wisconsin and it was to be used for smoking cessation and other

health concerns. But because of the budget fix we are in, those dollars are now going to be used for the budget deficit. And my fear

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is with the authority for the State to use 25 percent of these funds

on a discretionary basis, that they might not be coming back to the

sheriff’s department, the fire department and things that would

probably be more attuned to emergency responder.

Mayor NORQUIST. Well, there always is that danger. You can look

at TANF, the welfare funds, some of which have ended up being

used by States to solve their budget problems instead of getting

people out of poverty and off welfare. That is always a danger.

I would approach it this way, rather than say cities ought to get

the money instead of the States, I think that the Federal Government should decide what it is going to do to fulfill its responsibility

to protect the people of America. And that funds should follow the

function and where things can be most effective.

To make sure that funds are expended efficiently, I am not sure

that any level of government should be getting 100 percent funding

from the Federal Government in this area. That might sound

strange coming from me. I do not completely agree with the U.S.

Conference of Mayors, which wants to have an unrestricted block

grant in this area, and I would not agree that States ought to just

be able to have money to throw around.

We are talking about people’s lives here and setting up a system

that will actually protect people. And so where you have capability,

for example, the State’s lab, which you will hear more about from

Mr. Chapin later on, or our lab. You know, working out who does

the testing if there is a chemical threat is something that the city

of Milwaukee and the State can try to work out who does what for

what part of the State of Wisconsin. But if it becomes just a block

grant that people dip into and one level of government is given the

money to use for whatever purposes they decide to use it for, I am

not sure that you will fulfill your Federal agenda.

Your CDC is very valuable, it is a great Federal agency with tremendous partnerships. You need to decide what you want to accomplish and not just try to figure out how to make various groups

happy.

So, you know, my plea to you would be to have the money follow

where it is going to be the most effective. That takes a thoughtful

approach by the Federal Government, not just making State governments happy or local governments happy, but figuring out how

things will work effectively in Wisconsin or California. And you can

do this, but I would be careful about how you do it and set it up

in a way where there are incentives for people to focus on what

really works and what works efficiently rather—the danger, just to

close on this—remember when you had the concern about riots and

civil disturbances back in the Vietnam era and the civil rights demonstrations? There were some Federal programs set up that led to

riot gear, water cannons, all those sort of things. Maybe it made

sense in places where it was likely to happen, but it did not make

sense in Minot, North Dakota or Decora, Iowa. And yet money was

expended through law enforcement grants all across the country on

things that really did not make sense.

So I think you really have to craft this carefully so that it actually provides protection to the people of Sheboygan. Maybe it

makes sense to find ways to have Sheboygan have an incentive to

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use our lab instead of building their own lab. And knowing the

Mayor of Sheboygan, I think they would be very open to that.

Mr. KLECZKA. Thank you, Mayor.

Mr. HORN. We will be alternating the questions on a bipartisan

basis. And we are now going to have 5 minutes for Mr. Petri, the

other Congressman for the rest of—as far as I am concerned—the

rest of Wisconsin.

Mr. PETRI. Well, first of all, Mr. Chairman, thank you very much

for coming to Wisconsin and having this hearing. I think people in

Wisconsin as well as all across the country are concerned about the

various aspects of the terrorism threat. We have obviously been

doing the best that we can to react to what happened on September

11th and the anthrax attack and we want to be part of the solution

to that. And it is a national problem, including here in Wisconsin.

With that said, it is also, it seems to me—I am not on your committee; normally, I work in the transportation and education area

and in the transportation area in particular, that is a Federal,

State and local responsibility and we have found it tends to work

best if there is cost-sharing so that people who are actually at the

local level carrying out the programs have some incentive to not

gold plate and to kick the tires and to make sure they are getting

dollars for dollars spent, because it is some of their money.

And I am just curious if any of the witnesses, the Mayor in particular, but a number of the others, can help me to understand if

they feel there is a difference in how far the dollars go if it is 100

percent dollars from—and not just how far they go, toward achieving the objective of the program, if there is cost sharing or if it is

100 percent Federal money. I would expect if it is 100 percent Federal money, I would have a big incentive at the local level to spend

a lot of local money on grant writing, which does not really get the

job done, it just brings the dollars home, rather than on actually

achieving the objective of the overall program. And if there is local

share and we do not go for it, it might be because we are all working for the same citizens at the end of the day, whether you are

a citizen of Milwaukee, you are still a citizen of Wisconsin and of

the country. If the local perception that the threat is not that great

in that area and they do not really want to spend local dollars on

it, maybe the Federal Government should not force them to do it

and should spend the money where people perceive the threat to

be greater, because they are willing to spend their own hardearned dollars on that threat.

Mayor NORQUIST. Well, I think that having some local share or

State share would help invest in existing infrastructure and causing that to be shared with everyone who might feel threatened by

terrorism, particularly if in-kind matching was allowed.

We already have a lab, the State already has a lab. Creating new

labs may not be the answer and investing in existing infrastructure

so that it can serve more people would be something that a match

would tend to create as opposed to 100 percent grant where you

can go out and create things that may not make sense.

Also, the other reason—I answered part of this to Congressman

Kleczka, but another reason why I would fear a 100 percent grant

program is that it is utterly insustainable—there is no question.

Every time the Federal Government creates a 100 percent grant

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program, it is the gift that always stops giving. Other concerns suddenly pop up in future years and then the money is shaved back.

There is no point in starting up something that would look grand

and fantastic to the local and State administrators but disappear

very quickly in the future. I think it is more realistic to set it up

right in the first place so it is predictable and you can have a commitment by the Federal Government to deal with this over the next

10 years or so and not just start it up at 100 percent and then walk

away a few years later.

Mr. PETRI. Mr. Gleason, I should give you a chance to expand on

this from the State point of view.

Mr. GLEASON. Thank you, Congressman.

A lot of the points you made and the Mayor made, I do not disagree with philosophically, but we are at a point that, you know,

our Nation is at war and we are trying to build capacity in a hurry

at the same time where our economies, not just at the State government, but at the local governments are stretched. And this is

a chance right now and it has been our chance over the last 4 years

of these fiscal dollars, to get us in the game. And eventually, I

think there should be ownership passed back to the local government and State government to sustain that effort and make the

matches.

But if we are going to make that difference in the short term,

at a time when we are facing a $1 billion deficit, the no-match requirement certainly takes some of that burden.

To just address Congressman Kleczka’s concern, I had mentioned

in my testimony, 95 percent of our first year of Federal fiscal dollars went to the local communities. I have every intent to make it

continue at that pace. The idea that you need a 25/75, the only

thing it does is there are certain Statewide capabilities that benefit

local units of government that really only can be done under the

umbrella of the State, maybe an integrated justice communication

system. You would not want that in every municipality developed.

So that is why the 25 percent portion, some of that could fund

those type of capabilities. But our belief is and the Governor’s belief is that we are going to push that money down to the local units

of government.

Mr. HORN. The gentleman from Milwaukee.

Mr. KLECZKA. Thanks again, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Gleason, I should also point out that—and I do agree with

you that the resources of the State and local units of government

are stretched; however, so are the resources of the Federal Government. In fact, we are anticipating a return to yearly Federal deficits, the first one being about $320 billion. So the money is not

flush in Washington, DC, either.

But let me turn to the whole issue of the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Buikema from FEMA, you indicated you are excited over it and you think that this Homeland Security is probably

going to be the agency that will be best equipped to handle any future emergencies. I guess my question of you is—I have some concerns about, first of all, the size of the agency. If we are streamlining an agency to be an immediate response for emergencies, combining 22 current agencies to a department of some 170,000 people

does not smack of being streamlined, on its face.

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But what I am concerned about is two of the agencies that are

charged with the most responsibility for intelligence as far as any

future terrorist activity would be the CIA and the FBI. Do you not

think that they should be made part of this new agency or have

a more direct linkage to the new Department of Homeland Security?

Mr. BUIKEMA. Well, Congressman, thank you for the question. I

know that one of the benefits that we perceive of this new Department of Homeland Security is in fact the opportunity to better communicate, cooperate and collaborate with representatives of the

some 22 agencies that you mentioned. And as has often been said

before, there is at least 40 different Federal agencies that have

some responsibility in one way, shape or form.

The proposal, as I understand it, Congressman, is in fact that intelligence would be gathered from a number of organizations including the FBI and the CIA, as well as other organizations and

analyzed in the Department of Homeland Security, with the hope

and the expectation, of course, that will promote closer cooperation

and coordination among all intelligence gathering organizations.

So I am confident at this point that in fact the CIA and the FBI

will be able to provide great coordination and communication with

the new Department of Homeland Security.

Mr. KLECZKA. And Sheriff Clarke, you mentioned in your testimony a concern about the security clearance authority. Could you

indicate to the committee what is the current level of security that

your office, the fire department gets and what needs to be looked

at when we talk about the security info that you are getting.

Mr. CLARKE. The application itself is very cumbersome. It is

probably 10 pages long and the kind of information that they need,

they want you to go back and list for the last 7 or 10 years, the

times you have been out of the country. And I know my wife and

I go on vacation every year out of the country, so we have to go

back and get those dates. I mean I do not remember exact dates

that I was out of the country.

Mr. KLECZKA. So you are talking about the complex application,

is the first problem?

Mr. CLARKE. The application, yes, and then the length of time

that it takes for a thumbs up or thumbs down, to get that clearance.

Mr. KLECZKA. Chief, do you have the same—did you have the

same problem?

Mr. GARDNER. We get a lot of our information directly from the

FBI and with the sheriff and local police, and they work very well

with the needs that we have. So if there are imminent threats or

dangers, they give us an update on that. So I do not have the same

concern. That is a little bit more law enforcement.

Mr. KLECZKA. An added concern would be the holiday coming up,

the Fourth of July holiday. Did the department receive something

specific as to what the level of that threat might be?

Mr. CLARKE. We received information, I believe it was several

weeks ago. The exchange of information is adequate.

Mr. KLECZKA. OK.

Mr. CLARKE. But there are some things that cannot be released

to us because we do not have—or I do not have the security clearVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:20 May 22, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00061 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\87017.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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ance at this point. I am going to through the process now, I just

received the application 2 weeks ago. So I am not criticizing the

sort of information, but not having a security clearance, I am limited as to the sort of information I have. And I also have a responsibility to keep the chief executive of the county informed of certain

situations as well as Mayor Norquist having the largest municipality inside the county. And so it makes it difficult for me to keep

them informed, you know, if I am not informed.

Mr. KLECZKA. OK, but the question, using the example of the

Fourth of July, did you receive enough information to know what

level that possible threat would be, so you would know how to deploy your troops over the holiday period?

Mr. CLARKE. Oh, yes, the answer to that question is yes. We

have received adequate information.

Mr. KLECZKA. That is good to know, thank you very much. Thank

you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. HORN. Thank you. I will now yield 5 minutes to the other

gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Petri.

Mr. PETRI. Mr. Chairman, I know you have another panel and

I will not take the full time, but I just wanted to move to another

area.

Mr. Mayor, in your testimony, you spoke a bit about efforts that

Milwaukee had engaged in to increase the security of the water

supply for the city, probably in response to citizens’ requests for access to some of the facilities for fishing and recreational use.

This is a major concern on the part of a lot of Federal, State and

local officials, because we all have water systems, most of them are

operated by local government and there is a tremendous potential

vulnerability there.

I wonder if you could discuss at all what the Federal Government

is doing to kind of coordinate, or are there seminars, are they working with water system managers, how great is the real risk. I have

heard some people say well, we do put chlorine in, purify the

water, and therefore if it were biological things, it would tend to

kill most germs, but there is a danger that you could have a chemical illness added that was a threat to life or health of people. Could

you discuss that whole area?

Mayor NORQUIST. Sure. We have people that are—Mariano

Schifalacqua and his staff, he is the head of the Public Works Department, and he will be presenting this in more detail, but just

I think it might be helpful to understand that, you know, it is common sense to think that water could be a target. So it occurs to

people, you know, what are you going to do about it.

When the September 11th crisis hit, we had people in the media

and citizens saying well, maybe we should have a patrol boat

guarding the water intake and our water professionals said well,

that would not be a very good idea, the intake is below the surface

of the water and all that would do would be to mark where it was.

So that would not be the answer.

But there are things that can be done. Where the water can be

accessed, where there are major pipes that carry the water and

there are areas where maintenance people enter, having those

places secure and under lock and key, so that only the maintenance

workers get in, that makes sense.

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The electrical generation of the plant needs to be secure. The

chemicals that are used to treat the water, if they were all dumped

into the water at one time could create a problem. They need to

be secure. All of the basic ingredients that have to do with production of water, and the threat is not just contamination. The shutdown of a water supply could create an enormous problem of sanitation and health. So these are all things where common sense actually, kind of general knowledge that Members of Congress have

actually should lead you to ask the right questions about it as it

goes along.

Our experience has been pretty good in dealing with the Federal

Government, the EPA in terms of water security. And the consultant that we use is the same one that provided the security plan for

Los Alamos, and we were already engaged with them, because, as

I said, we were trying to find more access for fishermen near our

plant. They will present that more later on.

But I think it is one where congressional oversight actually is

very relevant because the general questions that would occur to

you are the same questions that would occur to the public and need

to be answered.

Mr. KLECZKA. Will my colleague yield?

Mr. PETRI. Yes.

Mr. KLECZKA. You bring up a very, very important point, and I

should indicate that in the last budget bill for the Department of

Defense, moneys were appropriated to the setup here in Milwaukee

in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a

water security institute. Those dollars were appropriated, the institute is being developed and it will be monitoring the water supply

in the State, especially in the Lake Michigan area. I also should

point out that in this upcoming budget, which—in the budget

which we just passed in the House last week—an additional $1

million was appropriated for furtherance of the duties of Wisconsin

Water Institute. So it is a concern that Congress also is aware of

and addressing.

Mr. HORN. Mr. Buikema, in your testimony, you state that the

three counties that are in the emergency planning zone around nuclear plants are not interested in stockpiling potassium iodide,

which can protect the public during a nuclear emergency. Could

you explain their concern?

Mr. BUIKEMA. I do not believe that was in my testimony.

Mr. GLEASON. Congressman, I believe that was in my testimony.

Mr. HORN. Sorry. OK, Mr. Gleason.

Mr. GLEASON. Back in December, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had gone to the Governors and asked if they would be interested in stockpiling potassium iodide and we did look into that,

we went and appeared before our task force and our health department reviewed it, and we came out with the recommendation that

we thought it was a reasonable measure to take consistent with the

Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But it is a change of our position,

because for years with nuclear plants, we had taken a position not

to stockpile. We did not want to do anything that interfered with

the evacuation. And that is primarily the concern of the local citizens of those counties, is the evacuation. If they felt they had this

potassium iodide, it would discourage evacuation.

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The second phase of that is testing your ability to distribute that.

And that is a particular challenge that has not been worked out

very well throughout the Nation yet.

So I think those are the two concerns that our counties had.

Mr. HORN. Thank you.

Captain Hartley, in your testimony, you discussed the Coast

Guard’s participation in training exercises involving weapons of

mass destruction and chemical releases. What was your assessment of the exercises? Did you discover any gaps in your response

plans? Did all participants fully understand their roles and their

responsibilities?

Captain HARTLEY. I think one of the benefits of any exercise that

we attend is that you walk away with a better sense of what is involved and what you need to do and improve on. From our perspective, things are looking much better.

Mr. HORN. Well, that is heartening.

Mayor Norquist, with the upcoming Fourth of July celebrations,

what message would you like to send to the people of Milwaukee?

Mayor NORQUIST. Love America. I really have not received any

information about the threat other than what I have read in the

paper, and my own view is that vague threats that—intimations of

vague threats by Federal agencies without any specifics probably

do more harm than good and, you know, if there is information

that needs to be communicated to law enforcement agencies and

there is some specific reason for them, that is vital, they should do

it, they should remain very active and alert.

But saying well, the Fourth of July, something bad might happen, I do not know what purpose that serves other than maybe if

something bad did happen, the Federal agency could claim they

warned everybody—I told you so—they could say that. But I do not

think it serves a real useful purpose.

I hope people enjoy the Fourth of July and that they think seriously about the importance of our democracy sometime during that

day.

Mr. HORN. Mr. Berkin, when we were just finishing up various

things in the legislative situation in Washington, one of them was

the very point that people are talking about, how we handle the

sharing of intelligence with our other colleagues in the State, in

local and the region and so forth. The Judiciary Committee did act

on that. We had sent them a bill proposed about 2 months ago and

another bill was coming through which included the CIA. I do not

know if you have had any direction yet from the agency in Washington, but the theory here is to get and to check on intelligence

and to make sure that the various things can be put with responsible people within the sheriff’s office, the police department and all

the rest. And I just wondered if anything has come out from your

headquarters since they just did it a week or two ago.

Mr. BERKIN. I have not yet seen anything as specific as you refer

to, Mr. Chairman, but what I can tell you is that for a very long

time, well in advance of the events of last year, the sharing of information between law enforcement agencies, between the FBI and

its colleagues, whether they be Federal, State or local, has been an

important issue that every FBI field office, including this one, addresses.

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Subsequent to the events of September 11th, an increasing premium has been placed upon the value of sharing such information

and there is more demand for it from our partners perhaps than

there has been in the past and we are attempting to satisfy that

demand. That is direction we received from Director Mueller directly, indicating that he desires us to ensure that the sharing of

information with our law enforcement colleagues is timely and

thorough.

To that end, we have undertaken all the various steps that I alluded to in my oral testimony, and I believe that those steps have

in fact been effective. Take the example you brought up, the sheriff’s department, a deputy is housed in our space now, is a full time

integrated partner with us as an investigator. There’s two purposes

for that. One is to serve as a very specific conduit for information

back to his own agency, but really more so the responsibility of the

members of the JTTF is to be alert to the equities of their individual constituent home agencies. I am not a deputy sheriff, I do not

necessarily know what Sheriff Clarke, in this instance, might personally find to be of special significance to him, although I can use

my common sense and judgment in that regard. But by having people from individual agencies with us, they can be alert to their own

special equities and they can raise those issues with us and say in

a given case, this is something that my particular agency would

like to know more about, it is particularly important to us, something that might be lost on us through inadvertence. We can avoid

that by having colleagues from other agencies housed where we

are. I myself have been a detailee to the Central Intelligence Agency and I know that works very well, because in protecting FBI equities there and promoting agency equities back to the FBI, I have

seen how both agencies can benefit from that. I think that same

model is working on a very specific scale in the Joint Terrorism

Task Forces.

Mr. HORN. Well, that is good news. And if other FBI offices are

doing that around the country, I would give them a parade. We

have had nothing but cooperation from the FBI on all the hearings

we have had, and as well in Washington or in the field. So we are

delighted that you are moving ahead on that type of situation.

Let me now call on—it will not be all we will ask of her, but we

will start with Jayetta Hecker, the Director of the Physical Infrastructure issues, she represents the Comptroller General of the

United States. He has a 15-year term, so neither President nor

Congress could get mad at him because he can still be there. And

he has done a marvelous job, Comptroller General of the United

States Walker. One of his top people is Jayetta Hecker.

So we would like to know from your Federal, across-the-wholenation view on some of these. Give us your thinking on this.

STATEMENT OF JAYETTA HECKER, DIRECTOR, PHYSICAL

INFRASTRUCTURE, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE

Ms. HECKER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Mr.

Petri, we are very pleased to be here today, and focus, if you will,

on the key aspects of this proposal for a Department of Homeland

Security on intergovernmental relations and effective partnerships

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with State and local governments. That is the presentation that I

have had for you today.

I have four areas that I would like to cover. Some are broad

areas and comments about the proposed department and then

three that flow from that—key aspects of effective partnerships between levels of government in terms of the roles, the performance

goals and finally, the appropriate government tools that are used.

As you mentioned earlier, our comments are based on the fact

that GAO has been looking at key programs targeted to control and

prepare for terrorism for well over 5 years. I have got about 30 reports that are attached to my—references to reports attached to my

statement, and most significantly recently, the Comptroller General spoke just last week on the new department and we developed

a comprehensive statement and I have a few points to summarize

from that today.

My position—everyone else’s is kind of self-evident, where they

come from and why they know anything about this—my responsibility is that in support of congressional oversight. I oversee all

the work looking at key surface programs, in which case I work

very frequently with Chairman Petri in the Surface Committee.

Also emergency management programs and also all the maritime

programs, so I have experience and we have worked looking at

major Coast Guard challenges in this new environment, maritime

and port security. I have worked looking at the transformation of

FEMA and the full range of responsibilities and then of course surface programs as well.

The main point about the department is that it really holds

promise, but it is anything but a quick fix. We are concerned that

in fact, it will take substantial time and additional resources to realize that promise. And I think one of the interesting things is a

lot of the comments that you have heard today about the challenges, intelligence sharing and clearances and relationships with

different units—they are not fixed by formation of the department.

So the underlying challenges really remain and the bringing together of some of these related agencies does not solve the problem

itself.

Our main concern really though is that the challenge of effectively clarifying and partnering the different roles of government is

not lost in the significant challenges of putting this department together. They will face enormous challenges in information technology, which I know you know a lot about, and the component

agencies have their problems, so putting them together is a

compounding of problems. They will face enormous challenges in

blending their work forces, in financial management, in acquisition

tools. And none of that gets to the point about really building effective partnerships with State and local governments.

So our concern is as the department is formed that there be adequate and continuous focus really on the building of effective partnerships with State and local governments. Basically, my statement talks about three areas where we think there is required

focus in not only the department—but the strategy that still is not

prepared—that needs to guide the department, and that is the effective roles of the different levels of government, moving toward

effective goals and measures of what preparedness is. Right now,

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we do not have those measures. We do not have an idea of how

well prepared different levels of government are. There are efforts

to define standards and there have been reviews, but there is no

agreement of what preparedness is or what homeland security is.

And finally, tools.

So these are really the critical areas in the formation of the department and the essential nature of building effective partnerships, we are concerned not be lost in the process of pulling together the department.

Mr. HORN. Thank you. Do the gentlemen from Wisconsin have

any questions?

[No response.]

Mr. HORN. Then we will move into the health-related issues and

we will start with the Commissioner of Health, city of Milwaukee,

Dr. Seth Foldy. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Hecker follows:]

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STATEMENT OF SETH FOLDY, M.D., COMMISSIONER OF

HEALTH, CITY OF MILWAUKEE, WI

Dr. FOLDY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the Wisconsin delegation, Mayor and members of Common Council.

I have submitted written testimony which begins with laying out

a scenario in which some 400,000 people across the city of Milwaukee mysteriously start developing a medical condition that in fact

reflected a real condition we faced here in Milwaukee in 1993, a

situation in which it took several days before health authorities

could even be sure that an outbreak was underway, when it took

more days to detect exactly what the cause of the outbreak was

and additional time to be able to understand what the source of the

problem was.

The point that I was trying to make, of course, is that bioterrorism and natural disease outbreaks, accidental disasters and other

problems such as heat waves are events that occur on a regular

basis and that from a public health perspective are not always that

different. In each of these situations, there are four major points

that need to be understood from the public health perspective, particularly at the local level.

The first is that prevention is an option if, but only if, enough

information regarding the threat is understood and acted on.

The second is whether it is a natural event or a terrorist event,

these are always complex emergencies that require coordinated action of up to scores of agencies.

Third, that health care providers, first responders and the public

are really depending on public health authorities for rapid, authoritative health information; again, whether this is a terrorist or nonterrorist event.

And finally, and particularly in the case of communicable disease, the source of an outbreak is typically obscure and sophisticated epidemiologic, environmental and laboratory tools are required to identify and eliminate the source.

Now why do I come to a hearing on terrorism preparedness and

talk about non-terrorist events? It certainly is not because I intend

to argue that the public health work force and infrastructure is

well prepared to deal with terrorism. In fact, the thin white line

that protects the American population from both natural and manmade agents has actually eroded over the last half of the 20th century, although we in Milwaukee are proud that we have wrung

enormous lessons out of each of the emergencies that we have faced

over the last decade. Nevertheless, until recently, we would consider many of our solutions jerry-rigged and perhaps not adequate

for the next challenge.

What I do want to reinforce is the understanding that Congress

endorsed in the Public Health Threats and Emergencies Act of

2001, and that is precisely that the need to respond to the needs

of terrorist activity must also simultaneously strengthen total public health infrastructure of the Nation, and not simply create new

programs for terrorism.

The same infrastructure that is needed for bioterrorism must

also support our defenses against natural outbreaks and accidental

disasters. Otherwise, we have ended up weakening and not

strengthening homeland security.

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I would like to point out the testimony presented last week by

the General Accounting Office, their concern that merging general

purpose public health functions of the Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention into the Department of Homeland Security could

weaken the fabric of our all-purpose public health response capacity.

I would like to point out, for example, how perhaps somebody

who is concerned exclusively with terrorism might view the national pharmaceutical stockpile as an important homeland security

issue. I view the national pharmaceutical stockpile as creating an

essential infrastructure should there be a natural outbreak of endemic influenza in the country that would require the rapid production and dissemination of a specialized vaccine across the country. So it is critical for us to examine how these programs can continue to integrate, whether or not we create a new department.

I would like to note that in Milwaukee, we have actually aggressively integrated our efforts with those of law enforcement and

public safety. We are actually becoming members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force that was previously mentioned, and by doing so,

we are grafting a full service public health response onto local law

enforcement and public safety, rather than creating a pale shadow

public health entity that would duplicate our efforts.

I would like to point out to the committee that in the 2001 and

2002 appropriations for public health and bioterrorism preparedness, Congress did take a tack that might be useful in other situations as well. And that is to award funds to States with the understanding that 80 percent of those funds go to support the infrastructure of local public health agencies.

I would like to point out that information collection, management

and sharing is one of the critical issues that is faced by public

health related to bioterrorism as well as other public health emergencies and that funding for this type of information sharing and

management is actually one of the critical tasks. Furthermore, that

the responsibility for such information sharing does need to be located at DHHS because it does reflect the sharing of confidential

health information, the sharing of information that may be generated by medical billing systems. There are certainly ethical and

medical/legal concerns that are related to this information process

and, therefore, we think in the end, HHS will need to play a critical role in the development, similar to the development of its national electronic disease surveillance system and health alert network.

Just in closing, I would like to notice a couple of real positives

in Federal policy. We were quite satisfied with the sophisticated

laboratory response that Wisconsin was able to muster over the

last several months regarding anthrax powder concerns that existed primarily because CDC’s laboratory response network had

better prepared both State and local public health laboratories to

respond to that emergency.

And I would like to point out to the subcommittee that HHS,

CDC and the Health Resources and Services Administration acted

extremely expeditiously in the distribution of terrorism and emergency public health preparedness funds from the 2001 December

appropriation. Within months, clear guidance had been issued,

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funding has been initiated and I would suggest that the subcommittee examine the carefully defined emergency preparedness

capabilities that formed the framework of CDC’s grant program, to

better understand the true inter-relatedness of public health programs and their capabilities and how they may interact effectively

with the Nation’s larger preparedness agenda.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Foldy follows:]

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Mr. HORN. Thank you. Before we call on the Administrator for

the State of Wisconsin Department of Public Health, I want to put

on the record that I have an excellent paper here by the Commissioner of the Department of Public Works of Milwaukee, Mariano

Schifalacqua. It is the best I have seen in a number of hearings

around America and it has to do with water quality. That is a very

important thing and has a major part in the health situation.

When I was in Europe a few months ago, four terrorists were

caught attempting to taint Rome’s supply of water. Thankfully,

they got them in time. Otherwise, the whole population of Rome

would have been poisoned.

So I would like to have Mariano lay it out for us. It is a marvelous paper, as far as I am concerned.

STATEMENT OF MARIANO SCHIFALACQUA, COMMISSIONER OF

PUBLIC WORKS, DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS, CITY OF

MILWAUKEE, WI

Mr. SCHIFALACQUA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I will not go into all the details that are in that statement, but

there are a couple of areas that I think are important to highlight.

First of all, I want to thank the members for the opportunity to

address you on this critically important topic. While all aspects of

public works may be required to respond in an emergency, I wish

to focus on one basic but essential public service, which is the Milwaukee Water Works.

The Water Works is a wholly owned and operated water utility

within the primary government of the city of Milwaukee. As such,

each year, the Water Works treats and distributes approximately

41 billion gallons of pure, clean Lake Michigan water to 845,000

people including the city of Milwaukee residents and 14 surrounding suburban communities.

Water service in Milwaukee is accomplished by two major water

treatment plants which draw water from Lake Michigan, effectively

treating that water and then distributing it through numerous

major pumping stations, booster stations, elevated and ground storage facility as well as over 1950 miles of water mains. Water systems in general have been identified as a vulnerable asset simply

because of their large expanse and ability to reach into almost

every household and street corner.

A common carrier of drinking water, under the right circumstances, can potentially become a common carrier of biological,

chemical or nuclear agents. Improving security effectiveness or reducing the consequences of an attack can be effective means of reducing the risk to water infrastructure and ultimately impact the

public health.

The city of Milwaukee has proactively been involved in this effort. In 1999, we conducted a security review of our water plant facilities primarily focused on physical deterrents. Based on those results, we identified areas requiring remedial solutions and funded

those with local funds in 2000, 2001 and 2002. This assessment

helped focus our efforts in defining the appropriate level of threat

to large water utilities and the response required to minimize that

threat.

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Much of the activity has been focused on short-term physical improvements such as 24-hour around-the-clock security presence, increased use of surveillance and lighting techniques, increased access control and monitoring, strengthening barriers such as doors,

alarms, locks and instituting more rigorous protocols and procedures.

Other efforts focused on increased education and training, resource identification and sharing, contingency and emergency response planning with health, fire, police, State and Federal agencies. Many of these same activities have been ongoing concurrently

in other public and private sectors; however, those sectors do not

share in the same level of accessibility that a water supply and distribution system have.

We applaud Congress for the supplemental appropriation this year of $90 million to the EPA for the purpose of issuing direct

grants to large water utilities to conduct vulnerability assessments

and related response planning activities. Milwaukee is scheduled to

receive a share of that appropriation at a time when this need is

the greatest.

Continued direct support at the local level is required in order

for all water utilities to move from the initial short-term response

and assessment into the development, research, implementation

and construction of the recommendations derived from those assessments.

There are many avenues available to accomplish this. While

some work has already commenced, the issues are complex and

cover many different groups, agencies, jurisdictions and levels. The

Federal Government needs to continue to work to ensure that effective and efficient response, resources and support is directly available to agencies on the local, municipal and county levels as first

responders to those potential threats and events.

Thank you and I would be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.

Mr. HORN. I thank you and we will now have the Administrator

for the Department of Public Health, State of Wisconsin, John D.

Chapin. We are glad to have you here.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Schifalacqua follows:]

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STATEMENT OF JOHN D. CHAPIN, ADMINISTRATOR,

WISCONSIN DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Mr. CHAPIN. Thank you. The hour is late and you have heard

much wisdom here, so I am not going to give you more wisdom. I

just want to reinforce four words of wisdom you have heard.

You heard Mayor Norquist talk about function, which is if this

stuff does not work, then it is a waste of time and it put lives at

risk. You have heard Commissioner Foldy define functionality as it

not only has to work in terms of the threat of bioterrorism, but the

dual functionality of public health means it has to work for the everyday business of public health. Otherwise, we are just going to

have tyvek suits and civil defense barrels sitting in the basement.

You have heard a word of wisdom from Ed Gleason in terms of

flexibility. You have heard people talk about, such as our representative from FEMA, the fear of fragmentation.

And let me put those four words together. Our problem is how

to functionally fund all the partners, but to do so in a manner that

avoids fragmentation, yet retains flexibility. And that is why I am

glad I am here and you are in Congress, because that is the paradox you face.

And let me just give four quick examples and be done. And

again, using the words of other wise people around this room.

When my department was writing the proposal for the CDC and

HRSA, we took much to heart the words of Mayor Norquist, although he hadn’t spoke them yet, which was the job of us as government officials was not to please everyone, but to have a functional proposal.

And let me talk about the dilemma. In Wisconsin, we have 72

counties, 100 health departments, 11 tribes, 450 EMS services and

if we wanted to give everyone a piece of the action, it would raise

a fundamental question of have we done anything to increase

functionality. And so our approach was one of let us not fund any

health department, any EMS, any city, any hospital, of which there

is 130 directly, but let us require them to form multi-county consortiums, let us require hospitals and EMS to form trauma regions

and then let us fund them cooperatively and collectively, because

what do we know about jurisdictions in Wisconsin? First of all,

they are all formed in the 19th century. Second, biological entities

do not care if they cross the county line or the village boundaries.

Third, there is not enough money to fund every jurisdiction up to

the point of self-sufficiency. And last, any mass biological event will

overwhelm any one individual jurisdiction; and therefore, our approach is to move the money out of the State to the localities, but

to do it in terms of regional structures that offer mutual response.

The second thing—and I will reinforce what Chief Clarke said

about the cacophony of information jurisdictions and confusion as

to all these different information systems. We said in Wisconsin

that the two fundamental pieces of CDC’s information system, the

Health Alert Network and the National Electronic Disease Surveillance System should be welded together. The information going out

and the information coming in should all be consistent within one

pipeline. And in addition, in Wisconsin, we put together an information steering committee to make sure that every jurisdiction

does not go out and buy their own software to please their own

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needs so that none of it links together. And that is one of the fundamental requirements we have, which is whatever you buy with

this money, it has all got to fit in the HON and NEDS pipeline and

we are going to do it together, so it is not like 19th century militia

and everybody shows up with their different musket with a different caliber. That led to Bull Run, by the way.

The other thing we wanted to do was to ensure that all partners

of public health were funded. And by that, I mean both private and

public dimensions. You have heard a great deal about laboratory

capacity. The plan in Wisconsin is to have four centers of laboratory capacity—the State Lab of Hygiene, the incredible Milwaukee

Public Health Department Laboratory, the VA Laboratory and the

Marshview Clinic in northern Wisconsin, yet that is a private entity. We were having a bit of a discussion with CDC, who seems

to think that public health is only the public sector. And what we

are saying to them is no, we want to fund a private lab because

we think citizens north of Highway 29 need to have laboratory capacity and whether it is private or public does not matter if it is

part of the public health system.

The other thing we are trying to do is in terms of accountability.

We think that for training, we have to use all the educational resources of Wisconsin and not create new structures, which is put

a coalition together of the medical schools, the five schools of nursing, the VA system and give them the charge of helping educate

all professionals, business, labor, community members because education for public health disaster has to be for the whole public.

And last, issues of accountability. These dollars are scarce, nobody has enough money. And therefore, we are putting out contracts for every single dollar with performance requirements

whereby whether we the State, local or private entities are not successful, we want some of that money back so we can redeploy it to

people who have been successful.

And I would like to end by urging you to go back to these four

words, as you think about your job, which is what we do has to be

functional, it has got to fund all partners of public health, yet

please give us the flexibility at the State level so that we can do

what is creative. Because the four innovations I just told you are

not asked for in either the CDC or the HRSA grants. We did it because we thought we needed to do it. And the last is, do not let

this scarce money be fragmented into 1000 pieces without appropriate coordination.

And I want to thank the Congress for supporting public health

and urge our Federal partners good luck in their tremendous task

ahead and to tell you that the good people of Wisconsin at the local,

State government will work together and will be successful.

Thank you very much.

Mr. HORN. Well, thank you because I was particularly interested

on the funding of the private lab and the worry of CDC on that.

Let me talk about another laboratory in a State as great and different types of topography and all the rest, and let us say we had

a germ warfare scenerio going on. Would any of the community colleges’ laboratories besides the two great universities and perhaps

the various colleges that are in Wisconsin play a role?

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Mr. CHAPIN. Let me raise the ante from your example one more.

Wisconsin also has a wonderful biotechnical industry. Our State

Lab of Hygiene is making relations and agreements with our

biotech industry across Wisconsin such that if there is a huge demand for capacity, we can bring the scientists from the private sector into our public sector labs to help us with these most difficult—

and I just want to reinforce the concept. States should have the

ability to form partnerships, both public and private, to protect. Because our public labs, such as the Milwaukee Lab, the VA Hospital

and our State Lab of Hygiene are just the first line, but we need

to do exactly what you have said, which is have the ability to expand that network so we can pull all the resources of Wisconsin to

deal with those issues.

Mr. HORN. Thank you. Do the gentlemen from Wisconsin want

a few questions here?

Mr. PETRI. Yes, I was hoping Mr. Chapin can stay around for a

few minutes and might be able to give some advice on what we do

about the wasting disease and the Federal Government’s inability

to have adequate capacity to monitor that. Maybe we can help

them somehow with some ideas.

But I wonder if you would comment a little bit about the Federal

effort to deal with this problem by creating a new Department of

Homeland Security, which is a departure from what you have done

at the State level in terms of trying to improve coordination and

focusing resources, but not creating an additional bureaucracy. I

suppose there is no agency, when you stop and think about it, that

does not have some security and health aspect to it in a sense. So

where you go and when you stop and how it all fits in and whether

it will be a diversion of whether it will be an addition, I just wonder if you could comment on that.

Mr. CHAPIN. I think speculating at Federal level is beyond my

canon authority, but let me use an analogy from what Mr. Gleason,

who is the chair, co-chair of our bioterrorism task force, and my

boss, who is the co-chair, and let me take the word of wisdom you

gave to me which is we believe every agency in Wisconsin has a

role to play and the approach we have taken is to say the true

issue is incident command and control and resource coordination.

And so let us have a Governor’s Task Force on Bioterrorism that

brings all the partners together and then in a collaborative role of

coordination, we can figure out how to coordinate this. For example, right now, we have multiple Federal agencies all giving multiple State agencies separate money with which we all fund local

entities. Now that could be a recipe for fragmentation. The approach Wisconsin has taken is to say let us get all the agencies in

one room with our local partners such as fire, police, county government, and let us figure it out here. Because putting everything

in one box is a good step if you are in chaos but it does not solve

all the coordination command and control. So rather than commenting on the Federal Government, I would like to point out what

I think is the wisdom that Mr. Gleason and others have brought

to this State in terms of saying it is the State’s responsibility not

to spend the money on themselves, but to coordinate that so that

all the dollars are not fragmented and they are functionally spent.

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So I think you might want to look to the model that Mr. Gleason

has put together for some insights.

Mr. PETRI. Thank you.

Mr. HORN. Anybody that has listened to all this, and you are

good soldiers here because I know you have many other things to

do, but if you had an idea that one provoked for another, we would

be delighted to have it on the record. So if there is—we will just

go around the line down there. Mr. Gleason, any thoughts that you

learned from this that we have not got on the record?

Mr. GLEASON. The only point I would make and I think it was

made by many people is this is clearly an example that has got to

be—and I think Governor Ridge has said this many times—it is a

national effort and a national effort does not mean it is a Federal

effort or a State effort or local, it is all these units of government

need to come together, we need to be as seamless as we possibly

can be, and get to that next step and that makes our Nation a better prepared Nation.

Thank you.

Mr. HORN. Any thoughts over here?

Mr. GARDNER. Right. I would just like to echo what everybody

else is saying, you know, as far as our risk assessment and our preparedness, I think when we do have an operational incident like

they have had historically across the country just recently, we

pulled together and we have managed them, but we have to continue to work toward being prepared and doing as was mentioned

as far as getting those resources to the appropriate level.

And I would just like to make a comment that you had asked

earlier of Mayor Norquist as far as this Fourth of July. I would just

like to say that everybody should be alert and aware. You know,

we have raised our level of awareness to where we should be able

to assist law enforcement and get the information to them as

quickly as possible, which then would help reduce the operational

side of our efforts tremendously.

I also appreciate the opportunity to speak before you here today.

Thank you.

Mr. HORN. Any thoughts here? You all testified very well.

Mr. BUIKEMA. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to echo the comments of Mr. Chapin, especially in regard to the need for cooperative planning regionally as well as the unified command system,

mutual aid. Those are themes that are recurring over and over

again. I think the lessons of September 11th have taught us the

need for interoperability of communications equipment as well as

response equipment and the need to make sure we have strong relationships with our partners at all levels of government.

Mr. HORN. Yes.

Dr. FOLDY. Mr. Chairman, I think you have heard how in Milwaukee, considerable work has been done to work across jurisdictions and to work across different programs. And I think you will

find as you travel around the country that there are areas where

those two rather thorny problems are being addressed in a creative

way, and those are going to be the communities that develop new

tools and new models for emergency preparedness and I would like

to suggest that some attention be paid to fostering innovation at

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the local level in those communities that establish models for the

rest of the Nation to learn from.

Mr. HORN. That is a good idea.

Captain HARTLEY. Mr. Chairman, if I could elaborate on Mr.

Chapin’s comment. Actually, I would like to see an all risk, all hazard incident command structure. From what we have seen in previous responses, you are really building a $1 million organization

overnight and that is tough to do in the best of situations. Getting

the players together beforehand in a non-threatening situation, discuss issues, sort them out, without all the pressures of a response,

works wonders, from our perspective.

Mr. HORN. Well, thank you. I think we should say the obvious,

that I do not know one person in Congress that is not a fan of the

Coast Guard. So you have got a good—right here is one of the key

people, Mr. Petri, and I just go along and say what a great bunch.

So thank you.

Ms. Hecker, closing for the General Accounting Office?

Ms. HECKER. There were indeed so many words of wisdom and

insights and I really credit you for creating these kind of forums

that really create the dynamics that lead to this excellent dialog.

Mr. Petri’s point I thought about incentives and the Mayor’s

point about sustainability, I think are pervasive issues that whatever the strategies are, we need to structure Federal programs and

assistance in ways that really build sustainable capacity. I think

there was a lot of discussion about the scarcity of resources, even

though there is new money and there is a lot of new money from

the Federal level being targeted at these problems, it still needs to

be targeted effectively—the flexibility needs to be there and the

performance focus, and I think we heard a lot about that.

Finally, I think the issue of the dual use, the reality that in fact,

as I think many have recognized, so many aspects of every level

of government are related to securing the homeland and I think we

need to be careful. I think as Mr. Chapin said, GAO has already

testified that the proposal for the Department of Homeland Security increases fragmentation of bioterrorism approaches and we

need to be very careful about the attempt to bring everything that

is related to homeland security together and then perhaps end up

making things worse rather than better.

But again, I commend you and this forum for so many excellent

issues.

Mr. HORN. Well, thank you very much.

Let me thank those who worked on this particular Milwaukee,

Wisconsin hearing. J. Russell George is our staff director and chief

counsel, at the table over there. And Bonnie Heald is to my left,

your the, she is the deputy staff director and spent as lot of her

energy with this particular hearing. And then Chris Barkley is

here somewhere—there we are, right at the table, he is our majority clerk. And do we have any of the interns here? Well, they did

a lot of work at home then—Michael Sazonov, Sterling Bentley, Joe

DiSilvio. And then we have Mr. Petri’s office, which has been just

marvelous in helping us through a lot of these things. One is the

chief of staff, Debbie Gebhardt is the chief of staff in Washington

for Mr. Petri, and in the District in Wisconsin is Sue Kirkman. And

the one that is often the hardest working person and that is our

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court reporter and that is Bill Warren. Bill, we thank you for coming. He goes with us almost around the Nation, we have a very

good court reporter.

With that, we thank everybody in Wisconsin and Milwaukee and

we appreciate that and we will put that into a report to the Congress. Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 12:12 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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