Collins hears from Portland Police Chief at hearing

By Deirdre Fulton

WASHINGTON – Local and state officials told senators Wednesday that federal homeland security dollars are not effectively being distributed to states and towns across the nation. Sen. Susan Collins, R.-Me., introduced legislation to give state and local governments more flexibity in how they use the money.

The federal government should allow local agencies to help determine their staffing, training and equipment needs, Portland Police Chief Michael Chitwood told the Governmental Affairs Committee.

Collins, who chairs the committee, scheduled the hearing to evaluate how homeland security money can best help protect towns, states and the nation. She said she wants to assess whether the government is "getting the right resources to the right people," she said.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the federal government has ordered Portland to increase police staffing by 600 percent at the Portland International Jetport. This requirement has "cost taxpayers close to a million dollars in police staffing and overtime," Chitwood said.

The police force isn't the only local agency with staffing troubles: officials at the Portland Fire Department and the Old Orchard Beach Fire Department are considering layoffs. Not one Maine fire department is compliant with national staffing standards set in place during the summer of 2001, a few months before the terrorist attacks, according to the International Association of Firefighters.

State and local officials also told Collins' committee that they lack money for training, that federal money takes too long to get to them and that there is not enough coordination between federal and local emergency agencies.

Chitwood added that local emergency workers have little say in how homeland security funds are spent. He said improving communication between federal and local agencies would help solve this problem.

Collins agreed that states need more flexibility to distribute funds. While the federal Office of Domestic Preparedness provides states with money for training of first responders and for equipment, emergency simulation exercises and planning, it doesn't permit local officials to make enough decisions about how the money is used, she said.

In the states, 70 percent of homeland security money goes for equipment purchases 17 percent for exercises, seven percent for planning and five percent for training. That formula is the same from Maine to Hawaii, and prohibits state officials from moving surplus money from one area to another.

Maine received more than $5.7 million in homeland security funds this year, according to the Office of Domestic Preparedness. About $4 million goes for equipment, and the remaining $1.7 million is used for training, exercises and planning combined.

Collins said the distribution of money means that "in some cases, we may see communities with up-to-date, complex equipment but lacking the training to use it most effectively. This defies common sense."

Collins' new bill would authorize the Department of Homeland Security to grant waivers to states that would allow money to be transferred from one category to another.

"I believe states should have the flexibility to spend homeland security dollars where they are most needed," she said.

Published in The Kennebec Journal and The Morning Sentinel, in Maine.