By Ed Somers and Ron Thaniel
October 18, 2004

Congress has approved its FY 2005 funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. Included in the final bill (H.Rept. 108-774) is funding for first responder grants, fire grants, port security grants, rail and transit security grants, aviation passenger and baggage screening with funds for the procurement and installation of explosive detection systems.

Overall, funding for key first responder programs was cut by more than $400 million from last year, with more provided for high threat areas and less for block grant programs (see chart).

Commenting on the cuts, Conference President Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic said, "Our first guard are the police and fire departments. This reduction sends a mixed message."

However, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) received a substantial increase in the bill. The bill increases funding for the TSA by more than $508 million.

Reimbursement

In a major policy change, the final bill includes language that would exempt much of the funding from the federal Cash Management Act. This exemption would eliminate the requirement that funding be spent by cities within three days of receipt, or that cities fund expenses out of local budgets and then seek reimbursement. The current requirement was found to be a major problem in getting federal homeland security funds spent, and the special Department of Homeland Security task force on funding issues that Mayor Plusquellic helped lead called for this important change.

Overtime

The final bill allows for overtime coverage under the High-Threat Urban Areas and Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention programs with no cap. The Senate had proposed a 10 percent cap, which the Conference worked to defeat.

Transportation Security

The final bill continues efforts to enhance security through increased funding for all modes of transportation, including aviation, maritime, rails, transit and highway.

Reorganized under the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness, the bill would provide $150 million for rail and transit security grants and $150 million for port security grants.

The bill would allocate $5.7 billion for the TSA and Federal Air Marshals Service. Within that category, aviation passenger screening will slightly more than $2 billion and aviation baggage screening slightly less than $1.46 billion.

Worth mentioning, recognizing the threat of a terrorist using air cargo, the conferees direct TSA to work more aggressively to strengthen air cargo security. In particular, TSA should strengthen the known shipper program to include regular security checks on all known shippers to assure that they are not compromising security standards. The bill provides a total of $115,000,000 for air cargo security. Of this total, $40,000,000 is for 100 additional inspectors and enforcement activities and $75,000,000 is for research and development of technologies to provide more effective and efficient methods of detecting air cargo threats.

Click here to view a comparison of some of the key programs in the final bill.