IIB 
109TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 1544 
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 
MAY 12, 2005 
Received; read twice and referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs 
AN ACT 
To provide faster and smarter funding for first responders, 
and for other purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
HR 1544 RFS 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Faster and Smarter 
Funding for First Responders Act of 2005’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
The Congress finds the following: 
(1) In order to achieve its objective of pre-
venting, minimizing the damage from, and assisting 
in the recovery from terrorist attacks, the Depart-
ment of Homeland Security must play a leading role 
in assisting communities to reach the level of pre-
paredness they need to prevent and respond to a ter-
rorist attack. 
(2) First responder funding is not reaching the 
men and women of our Nation’s first response teams 
quickly enough, and sometimes not at all. 
(3) To reform the current bureaucratic process 
so that homeland security dollars reach the first re-
sponders who need it most, it is necessary to clarify 
and consolidate the authority and procedures of the 
Department of Homeland Security that support first 
responders. 
(4) Ensuring adequate resources for the new 
national mission of homeland security, without de-
grading the ability to address effectively other types 
of major disasters and emergencies, requires a dis-
crete and separate grant making process for home-
HR 1544 RFS 
land security funds for first response to terrorist 
acts, on the one hand, and for first responder pro-
grams designed to meet pre-September 11 priorities, 
on the other. 
(5) While a discrete homeland security grant 
making process is necessary to ensure proper focus 
on the unique aspects of terrorism preparedness, it 
is essential that State and local strategies for uti-
lizing such grants be integrated, to the greatest ex-
tent practicable, with existing State and local emer-
gency management plans. 
(6) Homeland security grants to first respond-
ers must be based on the best intelligence con-
cerning the capabilities and intentions of our ter-
rorist enemies, and that intelligence must be used to 
target resources to the Nation’s greatest threats, 
vulnerabilities, and consequences. 
(7) The Nation’s first response capabilities will 
be improved by sharing resources, training, plan-
ning, personnel, and equipment among neighboring 
jurisdictions through mutual aid agreements and re-
gional cooperation. Such regional cooperation should 
be supported, where appropriate, through direct 
grants from the Department of Homeland Security.
HR 1544 RFS 
(8) An essential prerequisite to achieving the 
Nation’s homeland security objectives for first re-
sponders is the establishment of well-defined na-
tional goals for terrorism preparedness. These goals 
should delineate the essential capabilities that every 
jurisdiction in the United States should possess or 
to which it should have access. 
(9) A national determination of essential capa-
bilities is needed to identify levels of State and local 
government terrorism preparedness, to determine 
the nature and extent of State and local first re-
sponder needs, to identify the human and financial 
resources required to fulfill them, to direct funding 
to meet those needs, and to measure preparedness 
levels on a national scale. 
(10) To facilitate progress in achieving, main-
taining, and enhancing essential capabilities for 
State and local first responders, the Department of 
Homeland Security should seek to allocate homeland 
security funding for first responders to meet nation-
wide needs. 
(11) Private sector resources and citizen volun-
teers can perform critical functions in assisting in 
preventing and responding to terrorist attacks, and 
should be integrated into State and local planning
HR 1544 RFS 
efforts to ensure that their capabilities and roles are 
understood, so as to provide enhanced State and 
local operational capability and surge capacity. 
(12) Public-private partnerships, such as the 
partnerships between the Business Executives for 
National Security and the States of New Jersey and 
Georgia, can be useful to identify and coordinate pri-
vate sector support for State and local first respond-
ers. Such models should be expanded to cover all 
States and territories. 
(13) An important aspect of terrorism pre-
paredness is measurability, so that it is possible to 
determine how prepared a State or local government 
is now, and what additional steps it needs to take, 
in order to prevent, prepare for, respond to, mitigate 
against, and recover from acts of terrorism. 
(14) The Department of Homeland Security 
should establish, publish, and regularly update na-
tional voluntary consensus standards for both equip-
ment and training, in cooperation with both public 
and private sector standard setting organizations, to 
assist State and local governments in obtaining the 
equipment and training to attain the essential capa-
bilities for first response to acts of terrorism, and to 
ensure that first responder funds are spent wisely.
HR 1544 RFS 
SEC. 3. FASTER AND SMARTER FUNDING FOR FIRST RE-
SPONDERS. 
(a) IN GENERAL.—The Homeland Security Act of 
2002 (Public Law 107–296; 6 U.S.C. 361 et seq.) is 
amended— 
(1) in section 1(b) in the table of contents by 
adding at the end the following: 
‘‘TITLE XVIII—FUNDING FOR FIRST RESPONDERS 
‘‘Sec. 1801. Definitions. 
‘‘Sec. 1802. Faster and Smarter Funding for First Responders. 
‘‘Sec. 1803. Covered grant eligibility and criteria. 
‘‘Sec. 1804. Risk-based evaluation and prioritization. 
‘‘Sec. 1805. Task Force on Terrorism Preparedness for First Responders. 
‘‘Sec. 1806. Use of funds and accountability requirements. 
‘‘Sec. 1807. National standards for first responder equipment and training.’’. 
(2) by adding at the end the following: 
‘‘TITLE XVIII—FUNDING FOR 
FIRST RESPONDERS 
‘‘SEC. 1801. DEFINITIONS. 
‘‘In this title: 
‘‘(1) BOARD.—The term ‘Board’ means the 
First Responder Grants Board established under 
section 1804. 
‘‘(2) COVERED
GRANT.—The term ‘covered 
grant’ means any grant to which this title applies 
under section 1802. 
‘‘(3) DIRECTLY
ELIGIBLE
TRIBE.—The term 
‘directly eligible tribe’ means any Indian tribe or 
consortium of Indian tribes that—