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November 2004                                                                            Volume 7 - Number 2

Perspectives...

Setting Priorities for National Preparedness

By Sumner Bossler

“Homeland security assistance should be based strictly on an assessment of risks and vulnerabilities. Now in 2004, Washington D.C., and New York City are certainly at the top of any such list. We understand the contention that every state or city needs to have some minimum infrastructure for emergency response. But Federal homeland security assistance should not remain a program for General revenue sharing. It should be supplement state and local resources based on the risk or vulnerabilities that merit additional support. Congress should not use this money as a pork barrel.” (9/11 Commission).

The 9/11 Commission recommendations for setting priorities for National Preparedness, earlier this year were neither new, nor particularly groundbreaking in scope or reach. Threat-based funding preparedness recommendation have been addressed by a number of ‘blue ribbon” commission and panels in the recent past. Unfortunately, it took the deaths of nearly three thousand Americas, to drive this point home. Prior to September 11th, there was no government department that had the singular task of defending America from terrorism. While that may have changed with the formation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), this new and growing department now has the lead responsibility for protecting borders, organizing emergency assistance, securing transportation and other parts of critical infrastructure, all which came to light; before, during and after the 9/11 attacks. In today’s climate of bipartisan gamesmanship the idea that one agency, particularly a new one, can or will change “business as usual” is unlikely.

Throughout almost all branches of government, setting national priorities and making the hard choices in allocating limited resources has been difficult if not impossible. Constrained by today’s political nuances, the failure to make these hard choices has certainly crippled preparedness activities not just in the Department of Homeland Security, but also in many other government agencies and departments. The imbalances in the allocation of preparedness monies, especially in major metropolitan areas and states at greater risk for attack, has created a systemic weakness in getting the needed assistance to first responders.

These arguments brings to light many questions, two of which the 9\11 Commission has tried to address. First, how much money should be allocated for general “All-Hazards” preparedness? Simply, how much should be spent on preparedness activities that are not directly related to the threat of terrorism? Currently, for many governmental preparedness activities, a majority of the funds going to states is done via formulas, which do not account for threat and vulnerability. The second question was; how can risk and vulnerability related to terrorism be measured? The 9/11 Commission suggests that the threat-based assessments should consider or include the common attributes of “population, population density, vulnerability, and the presence of critical infrastructure within each state” (9/11 Commission). Many of the present risk based models for “all-hazards” preparedness and infrastructure protection are based on natural disaster models, which may not be applicable in an asymmetrical environment of terrorism threat.

Even if these difficulties can be overcome and useful criteria to measure risk can be developed which assesses all the variables related to terrorism. Will the executive and legislative branches allocate the funds based on threat? In the reality that is politics, it is understandable that certain members of the congress will work to protect the their own local interests, regardless of their state’s or district’s level of threat or vulnerably. While many will say that this issue is too important for politics as usual to prevail, politics generally always prevails without external forces applying pressure for change. Unfortunately, as time wanes and years pass, so does the impetus for change. Hopefully the United States will not have to endure another very bad day for business as usual to change.