Feds Cut Anti-Terror Funding in NYC, D.C.

The Department of Homeland Security slashed anti-terrorism money for Washington and New York in favor of cities like Jacksonville and Sacramento. Stunner: “A DHS risk scorecard for the city asserted that the home of the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge has ‘zero’ national monuments or icons.”

Washington Post:

The Department of Homeland Security yesterday slashed anti-terrorism money for Washington and New York, part of an immediately controversial decision to reduce grant funds for major urban areas in the Northeast while providing more to mid-size cities from Jacksonville to Sacramento.

The announcement that the two cities targeted on Sept. 11, 2001, would suffer 40 percent reductions in urban security funds prompted outrage from lawmakers and local officials in both areas, who questioned the wisdom of cutting funds so deeply for cities widely recognized as prime terrorist targets. The decision came less than five months after Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff unveiled changes in the grants plan intended to focus funding on areas facing the gravest risk of attack.

Potential targets outside the Northeast also took painful hits, including New Orleans, San Diego and Phoenix. New Orleans’s grants for security and disaster preparedness were cut in half even as it struggles to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.

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