Chief Leader – February 24, 2016
by MARK TOOR
Sen. Charles Schumer, Mayor de Blasio and the city’s Police, Fire and Emergency Management commissioners gathered Feb. 17 to criticize President Obama’s proposal to cut counterterrorism funding for New York City under a program aimed at urban areas by $90 million, or 50 percent.
The White House responded with a slashing attack on Mr. Schumer, signaling an intense battle to come over the reduction, contained in Mr. Obama’s proposed fiscal 2017 budget.
Mayor: Can’t Afford This
“As a city and as a nation, we cannot afford to reduce our commitment to fighting terrorism,” Mr. de Blasio said. “…I’m certainly going to let the President know that we care deeply in New York and we need this money to be restored.”
“These proposed cuts are ill-advised and ill-timed and they must be reversed, end of story,” Mr. Schumer said at the joint press conference at Police Headquarters.
“In light of recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, and the vow by our extremist enemies to launch more attacks on our shores, it makes no sense to propose cuts to vital terror-prevention programs like [the Urban Areas Security Initiative]. Fighting terrorism is above all a national responsibility.”
A Muslim couple in San Bernardino killed 14 people at a holiday party in December; a series of coordinated attacks in Paris last November killed 130.
“A $90-million cut is unconscionable,” Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said, noting that UASI funding had paid for license-plate readers, security cameras, radiological and chemical sensors, and operations including the active-shooter subway drill in November in Lower Manhattan.
No Dogs, Less Training
With less Federal money coming in, he said, the NYPD will not be able to afford new explosive-sniffing dogs and overtime for security and training.
Office of Emergency Management Commissioner Joseph J. Esposito, who took the post after retiring as the NYPD’s Chief of Department in 2013, said that two-thirds of his agency’s funding comes from the Feds and that OEM would “almost have to close our doors” if the cut goes through.
“Fifteen years ago, just a few minutes away from where we are right now, more than 400 first-responders died defending our country,” said Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro, referring to police, firefighters and others among the more than 2,700 who died during the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. “…The loss of this funding would be quite crippling to all first-responders, to all New Yorkers and to all Americans. It’s not just important. It’s a necessity.”
USAI was established to funnel more anti-terrorism funds to urban areas around the country that are at greater risk of terrorist attack. Mr. Obama’s proposed budget would cut the program from $600 million to $330 million. New York receives more funds from it than any other city.
Pointing to 9/11, officials of New York City and New York State have long insisted, as Mayor de Blasio and Senator Schumer stated at the press conference, that the city is the nation’s most-likely terrorism target. But Congress has treated anti-terrorism funds like any other pool of money, making sure every state gets a piece, regardless of the likelihood of an attack.
N.Y. State Ranks 10th
A study by the nonpartisan Stateline News Service, based on 2011 data, found that New York State lagged in per-capita homeland-security funding behind states better-known for wide-open spaces, maple syrup and grizzly bears than for military installations, major population centers, stock markets and other factors that could attract terrorists.
Wyoming is No. 1 on the list, with $9 per resident, followed by Washington, D.C., $8.60; Vermont, $8.20; North Dakota, $7.50; Alaska, $7.10; South Dakota, $6.20; Delaware, $5.70; Montana, $5.10; and Rhode Island, $4.90. New York is in 10th place, with $4.70.
The Rapid City, S.D., Journal reported in 2014 that the more than $100 million received by the state since 2003 had been spent on “fire trucks and ambulances for small towns; for surveillance cameras for schools and police stations; on communications gear for local and county police; on anti-cyber-attack security; on electronic fingerprinting technology; and to increase bomb-disposal capabilities…All that spending came in a state that arguably has very little threat of terrorism.”
A Schumer/Obama Feud
Mr. Schumer said the Obama administration had given him no acceptable explanation for the funding cuts. He pledged that “they will not stand.”
Mr. Obama’s Press Secretary, Josh Earnest, responded by using particularly harsh language to criticize Mr. Schumer, who is widely expected to replace the retiring Harry Reid as Senate Democratic Leader next year.
Mr. Earnest noted that the Senator refused last August to support the President’s proposal aimed at limiting the ability of Iran to build a nuclear weapon. Mr. Schumer was unhappy that the agreement barring Iran from building a bomb lasts for only 10 years. The deal won Senate approval after Republicans failed to pass a procedural maneuver blocking it.
“At some point,” Mr. Earnest said, “Senator Schumer’s credibility in talking about national-security issues, particularly when the facts are as they are when it relates to homeland security, have to be affected by the position that he’s taken on other issues. Senator Schumer is somebody that came out and opposed the international agreement to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. He was wrong about that position, and when people look at the facts here when it comes to funding for homeland security, they’ll recognize that he’s wrong this time, too.”
Claims Past Money Unused
Mr. Earnest said the funding was cut because the city had not spent all of the money it received.
Mr. Schumer said during the press conference that money remained unspent because “when you buy a complicated piece of machinery or even set up a training program, some of that money is spent in Year Two. Not all of it is spent in Year One.”
He said that the city had beaten back that argument in the past but that the “bureaucrat’s trick” of complaining about unspent funds had resurfaced this year.
No comments yet.