By Kathy Amoroso
February 6, 2006

“You are on your own!” Senator Hillary Clinton (NY) told the mayors gathered at the 74th Winter Meeting of The United States Conference of Mayors on January 25, 2006. “We are shifting costs and we are shifting risks onto individuals, and families, and local government. Mayors, you are on your own to protect your cities,” she told over 200 mayors attending the Luncheon Honoring Leadership in the Arts at the meeting.

“In 2004, only 24 percent of the cities according to statistics gathered by the Conference of Mayors had received money from the 2003 budget by the time you were asked. And a House Select Homeland Security Committee report showed that $5.2 billion out of $6.3 billion in Homeland Security terrorism preparedness grants had yet to be awarded,” she said. “So basically it is sitting in the federal treasury. It’s not going to police, firefighters, emergency workers, or cities,” she added.

“That means costs are being shifted onto all of you,” Clinton continued. “And we are confronting you with very difficult choices, which will only get harder because of our growing deficit position. Five years ago, this month, we had a budget surplus; we had a balanced budget. Now our national debt is at $8.1 trillion and climbing.

“This is not a Democratic issue nor is it a Republican issue. It is an American issue, and the mayors know better than anyone that if we are going to keep our country safe and protect our homeland and our people, we have got to do a better job than what we are doing today.”

Highlighting the need for streamlined and threat-based homeland security funding, Clinton called for direct funding to cities. “We have to begin to base decisions on evidence, not ideology. That means we need to distribute homeland security funding based on threats,” Clinton said. “We need to make sure you have the resources you need, just as the 9/11 Commission recommended, and we need to do so by overcoming politics and pork-barrel decision making.”

“We need to make sure we do that in a way that takes into account the differences in our country — the infrastructure that different parts of our nation have that need to be carefully evaluated and protected,” she continued. “I still believe in direct funding to cities. I don’t think we should have to have you run through the hoops, to go through all kinds of layers, and cities above a certain size should not have to wait on your state capitals to distribute homeland security funding. You ought to be getting that money directly,” Clinton told the mayors.

Also of concern to Clinton was the continued lack of nationwide interoperable communications systems. “I’m also deeply concerned, that all these years later, we still don’t in most of the country, have interoperable communications systems,” she said. “That was one of the key recommendations that I and others made after 9/11. It was certainly recommended by the 9/11 Commission.

“This is no longer acceptable because we saw the effects along the gulf coast. We saw what happens when a natural disaster overwhelms the capacity even to communicate at a local level.”

In closing, Clinton stressed the need to implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations. “These should be at the highest levels of federal concern working with cities, which will be on the front lines of any kind of disaster, so we can get it right. I hope as we move forward, we take to heart the challenge we were given by the 9/11 Commission.

“We need leadership. This needs to be an urgent, national priority,” Clinton told the mayors.