By Ron Thaniel
February 12, 2007

“I’m here to tell you today as someone who’s traveled miles in your shoes that you have a friend in Washington and on the Homeland Security Committee,” House of Representatives Homeland Security Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (MS), mayor of Bolton (MS) from 1973 until 1979, told the mayors at the Winter Meeting January 24.

“I was happy that Speaker Pelosi gave me the opportunity to handle the first bill of the 110th Congress, which was to complete the job of the 9/11 Commission to make sure that we put things in place. As chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, you can count on us to help build strong cities, strong families and a stronger America,” Thompson told over 200 mayors attending the afternoon Plenary Session.

Addressing homeland security unfunded mandates, Chairman Thompson said “I know what an unfunded mandate is as a local elected official. My committee will not do anything to put those unfunded mandates on you. If we ask you to do it, we’re going to provide a love offering to make it easier to happen.”

“The other thing is those of you, who are in cities, and you’re having difficulties working with states, we said that if the state won’t give you money in 45 days, then you can apply directly to the feds and get your money,” he added

Identifying other key points in the House approved Homeland Security bill, “Implementing the 9-11 Recommendations Act of 2007” (H.R. 1), Thompson told the mayors that, “We’ve created a dedicated grants program for interoperability alone so you won’t have to shift monies from other accounts.”

Addressing port security, he said, “We’re setting the policy where anything that’s coming from overseas will have to be screened within the next three to five years so that we know what’s coming into your communities.”

Dealing with rail security, he said, “Those of you who have rail, whether its passenger, freight or other in your communities, we’re going to have to do better. We’re spending right now about eight dollars and fifty cents per passenger who ride on an airplane and we’re spending two cents per passenger for passenger security on rail so we’ve going to have to fix it.”

“Those of you who have dangerous or hazardous cargo in your communities on rail, I’m concerned that a lot of our companies will leave dangerous cargo unguarded on side tracks in your community so a terrorist could do bad things to you. We will do a rail security bill by mid-March that will have a number of those situations in it to be corrected.”

In closing, Thompson said, “I’m happy that Speaker Pelosi has given me carte blanche authority to address any of these issues. I plan to do that in this session. If you work with us, we will make our country safer from bad people, we’ll do chemical plant security, nuclear plant security — all those other issues that are really important to our communities.”