On Friday DHS secretary Michael Chertoff announced final allocations for FY08 preparedness grant programs for states and localities.

DHS, Chertoff said, had made available a total of over $3 billion in total grants for FY08 for preparedness planning and response programs including both the Homeland Security Grant Program and $844 million in Infrastructure Protection grants which had previously been announced.

The focal point of Chertoff’s announcement was an allocation of $1.69 billion under the Homeland Security Grant Program, which reflects an increase of $32 million over FY07. This year’s grants included $861 million for the State Homeland Security Program, an increase of $352 million; $781 million for the Urban Area Security Initiative, an increase of $34 million. In addition DHS allocated almost $40 million for the Metropolitan Medical Response system, and $14.5 million for Citizen Corps.

This year’s grants also included some additional grant programs under the umbrella of Operation Stonegarden. “Operation Stonegarden,” Chertoff said, “ which is focused on enforcement for border states, is going to amount to $60 million this year.” Regional Catastrophic Preparedness grants, which are designed to boost catastrophic incident preparedness, were also allotted $60 million, Chertoff said, while the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, focused on nonprofit organizations, received $15 million.

Chertoff described Operation Stonegarden as “ part of our full court press to continue to expand and intensify our work to secure the borders, southern and northern, and to bring our state and local partners into that process.”

Chertoff cited several changes this year, most driven, he said, by congressional mandates and legal changes. One change was an addition of 14 new cities to the Urban Area Security Initiative raising the total number of cities eligible for funds from 46 to 60.

In assessing eligibility for urban grants, Chertoff said, there were changes in priority ranking based on the criteria for assigning relative risk outlined in the 9/11 Act which included new statistical measures related to density and some redefinition of geographic borders.

DHS continued the practice of grouping the cities into two tiers, with Tier I including the seven highest cities in terms of risk, basis and risk analysis. Within Tier 1, Chertoff explained, funding for most cities remained the same this year or went up, with some notable increases in San Francisco, New York, and Houston. Los Angeles/Long Beach and National Capital Region both went slightly down in Urban Area grants, he said, but were each up overall if the infrastructure grants awarded earlier this year were included.

A particular focus in looking at FY08 will be on addressing improvised explosive device deterrence, prevention, and protection.

“Almost every single terrorist act in the West since September 11 -- maybe every one; but almost everyone at least,” Chertoff declared, “ has involved an IED, an improvised explosive device. Every attempt has involved an improvised explosive device, whether it's the bombings in London, whether, you know, backpack bombs, whether it was the train bombing in Madrid, whether it was the liquid bombs they tried to put on airplanes as part of the 2006 plot. These are all IEDs. So when we prioritize IEDs as a focus, we are prioritizing what is far and away the greatest threat in the West with respect to terrorist attacks. It does not mean that we're limiting this to the very kind of sophisticated improvised explosive devices and roadside bombs you see in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is a much broader category.”

FY08 will be the first year tribes will be going to be directly eligible applicants for State Homeland Security Program funding, Chertoff said. “We look forward as we move forward to increasingly working with the tribes to make sure they are capable of doing what they have to do to protect their residents from not only terrorism but other kinds of hazards,” he added.

Asked what he thought future DHS spending priorities would be for once he handed off his role of DHS chief to his successors, Chertoff said, “One of the things I'm pretty focused on, and I hope my successor will be is, making sure that the Homeland Security Program doesn't begin to become so broadly defined that it is essentially a general revenue sharing or block grant program. I've read stories about a police community saying, for instance, maybe we've spent enough on the homeland security stuff, maybe we've spent enough on the Hazards Response stuff, but we need money for, you know, gang activities, or narcotics investigations. You know, those are worthwhile things. But, it seems to me that if a community doesn't feel a need for homeland security money, they ought to say, look, we think we've achieved what we need to achieve with Homeland Security and maybe that money ought to be directed to other programs or maybe we ought to apply for some other kind of thing. What I don't want to do is define Homeland Security so broadly that it ceases to have the discipline that I think we've imposed on the program as we go forward.”