It appears as if legislation of concern to the fire-rescue service survived the "first 100 hours" of the 110th Congress in good condition. The huge legislative package pushed through the House of Representatives by the new Democratic leadership is so big that hardly anyone is sure of all that it contains. With a few exceptions, most of the bills passed at breakneck speed by the House have hit a brick wall in the Senate, which is not going to be stampeded into moving any faster than its normally slow and deliberative pace.
Despite being narrowly controlled by the Democrats, the Senate may take 100 days or more to act on many of the items the House passed in 100 hours. An exception could be bills pertaining to homeland security and recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission, which bluntly criticized the Bush administration and the previous Republican Congress for failing to adopt many of its key proposals. There are almost 300 pages of anti-terrorism recommendations in the House's Democratic package, including a controversial plan to screen and inspect all air and ship cargoes headed to the United States from overseas. This proposal always has drawn strong opposition from powerful business, trade and transportation interests, along with the White House and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
As near as can be determined, the FIRE Act grants and the SAFER Act (small as it is) remain intact in the House package. However, at this stage they are merely authorized programs and appropriating the money that will give them life for another year comes much later in the legislative process. If you get the impression that the Democrats' "first 100 hours" was a smoke-and-mirrors political show, you're absolutely right. It will be interesting to see if the fire programs get more money from a Democratic Congress than they did when the Republicans were in control (currently $547 million for the FIRE Act). There has been a downhill trend in recent years and it always requires a united fire service campaign to spark a bipartisan congressional rescue effort to save them from the Bush administration's budget cutters.
Will this year be any different? Probably not, even though the FIRE Act has become one of the most successful federal grant programs. In the last few months, there have been numerous complaints that the grants have been slow to reach fire departments that qualified for awards. The process clearly has fallen behind schedule and it's blamed on bureaucratic problems within DHS. It's no secret that some DHS officials always have been hostile to the FIRE Act, but in this case it seems to be inertia rather than sabotage that is causing the delays. Hopefully, the problem can be corrected by simply telling those responsible to get cracking.
In a major policy change, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff announced that there would be a new "common sense" approach to distributing the bulk of anti-terrorism funds to cities that are the largest or most symbolic targets for an attack. An ugly controversy erupted last year over a complicated formula DHS used to give more cities a slice of the $747 million in Urban Area Security Initiative funds. It favored more medium-sized and smaller cities and foolishly downplayed the risk confronting New York and Washington - which actually have experienced terrorist attacks. Under the new policy, more than half of that money ($411 million) will be set aside to be shared among six urban centers: New York/northern New Jersey, Los Angeles/Long Beach, Chicago, Houston, the San Francisco Bay area and Washington, DC. An additional $100 million has been earmarked to assist local police counter-terrorism operations in these areas.
"We actually listen to people," Chertoff told reporters in announcing the change. He called the old formula a "bean counting" approach. Last year, top DHS officials were stubbornly defending this approach when they appeared before congressional committees and were confronted by angry members and mayors whose cities ranked low on the DHS risk list. It shows how things can change when the top dog makes a decision. Still, you can't please everyone and in Washington there are times when you can't please anyone. Some members in the New York delegation are upset because the Big Apple has been lumped together with northern New Jersey in the grant pool. Congressmen from smaller places are upset because the $509 million state grant program is $19 million less than it was the previous year.
With so much money involved, it was inevitable that this would happen. From the start of federal aid for local emergency services, there have always been the twin dangers that Congress would treat the programs like a gigantic pork barrel and miserly local governments would save budget money by depending on Washington to provide funds for basic needs. It's in everyone's best interest to use common sense and prevent this from happening.
HAL BRUNO, a Firehouse contributing editor, retired as political director for ABC News in Washington and served almost 40 years as a volunteer firefighter. He is a director of the Chevy Chase, MD, Fire Department and chairman of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.
