{ "id": "2005-marchapril-big-bucks-flow-to-rural-areas", "slug": "2005-marchapril-big-bucks-flow-to-rural-areas", "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2005-marchapril-big-bucks-flow-to-rural-areas.html", "year": 2005, "month": "March/April", "monthNum": 3, "headline": "Big bucks flow to rural areas", "kicker": "SPOTLIGHT: THE WAR AT HOME & ABROAD", "author_name": "Bert Dalmer", "author_title": "", "affiliation": "The Des Moines Register", "summary": "Analysis of Homeland Security grants in Iowa reveals questionable allocation patterns, spotlighting discrepancies in rural versus urban funding.", "keywords": [ "homeland security", "funding", "Iowa" ], "topics": [ "Investigative Methods", "Government & Politics", "Data & Databases" ], "technologies": [ "Excel" ], "full_text": "By now, every journalist with a passing interest in federal or state government has heard the complaints out of New York and Chicago - that America's largest cities are being shortchanged by the federal government in the area of homeland security.\n\nAt a glance, the fussing seems logical. Especially when you discover that a state like Iowa, whose largest city would constitute a neighborhood in Chicago, has been pledged more than $100 million thus far to protect its populace from terrorists.\n\nFew in the media have suggested that police and firefighters don't need equipment to respond to a large-scale attack. But few have bothered to dive into the records to illustrate the problem in terms every reader can understand.\n\nThat was the challenge The Des Moines Register took on in the wake of a flurry of praiseful but cryptic news releases from Iowa congressmen and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. After a few weeks of background study and another week of crunching the numbers, Iowa's grant decisions were revealed at best to be questionable, and at worst, laughable.\n\nInitially, the task of following the money seemed daunting. The bureaucracies were extensive; the jargon was mind numbing. Not only were we tracking budgets set in Washington, D.C., from Des Moines, but also it was nearly impossible to find anyone who could explain the grant process or to define the government's overall homeland security strategy.\n\nWhen half a dozen phone calls to the Homeland Security press office yielded little more than referrals to old press releases, it was clear that our research time would be better spent close to home.\n\nWe scheduled a pair of meetings with the state's homeland security office just to get the lay of the land. Then we made a verbal request for a county-by-county accounting of all the homeland security grants it had received.\n\nWe received a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet just a few days later.\n\nFor a number of reasons, the grants as a whole defied neat and easy explanation. Many homeland security grants are administered by federal agencies with differing purposes and grant rules. Many traditional grant programs, particularly in the Department of Justice, were taken over by Homeland Security, which offered money for a whole new set of initiatives.\n\nFor ease of explanation, we decided to concentrate our efforts on just one grant program that would be both interesting and relevant. We chose the State Homeland Security Grant Program, which has thus far funneled $28 million to Iowa's first-responders, such as police, firefighters and emergency managers.\n\nUnder this program, the state had wide latitude to decide how the money was to be allocated to its first-responders. Eventually, we learned that the counties also had wide latitude to spend their share of the grant.\n\nIn 2003, the grant's first year of existence, money was awarded in two waves. I asked the state for a further breakdown of the funds and added a column of population statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau.\n\nCurious patterns emerged in the Excel spreadsheet right away. Why were the two grants awarded so differently? Why were some grants spread evenly among counties, while others had skipped some counties altogether?\n\nWhen I asked for an explanation, state officials acknowledged that they had divvied up most of the first state homeland security grants without much prioritization or forethought. By the time of the second grants, a more complex formula was devised, based in part on population, critical infrastructure (like power plants, refineries, skyscrapers and landmarks) and agricultural production.\n\nI asked the state for a further breakdown of the second round of grants.\n\nAfter some basic Excel sorting, the numbers revealed a few eye-opening trends:\n\nAll 99 Iowa counties had received a base share of the grants, and often thousands more without regard to how vulnerable they were to a terrorist attack.\nThe state had kept almost one-third of the grants for administrative costs and statewide purchases, like 98 pairs of night-sight binoculars for park rangers.\nIowa's five largest counties, home to one-third of the state's population, received just 15 percent of the homeland security money. The state's largest county, Polk, shared only $250,000 of its $1.2 million with the state's largest city, Des Moines.\n\nA subsequent analysis of a master equipment request compiled by the state for review by the feds fleshed out the story in more tangible terms. This was the nut graf of the Register story:\n\n\"Iowa counties' first anti-terrorism requests to the federal government include $6,700 in traffic cones, signs and barricades; $21,000 for six squad-car cameras; $4,500 in night-sight equipment; a $500 underwater camera; a $370 wall clock with a built-in hidden camera; and megaphones, pagers, work gloves, rubber boots and paper shredders.\"\n\nFurthermore, money that had been awarded in the name of fighting \"agro-terror\" in one of America's most rural states was often used to buy everyday equipment like radios.\n\nAuthorities in Iowa's most prolific farm county received $114,000 specifically for its agricultural resources, but officials there said the money was too insubstantial to try to protect their crops and livestock.\n\nExperts called the Iowa grant formula politically safe but strategically silly. The state spending plan, they said, paralleled the indecision seen at the federal level, where grants were handed down to the states based only on population - not risk.\n\nA Congressional report issued in the days following the Register story showed that Iowa was among a minority of 21 states that considered some terrorist risk before parceling out federal grants to cities and counties. But Iowa was also one of 25 states that gave money to counties, regardless of the risk.\n\nSounds like Chicago might have a point after all.", "provenance": { "extracted_by": "pre-v2", "extracted_at": "", "verified": true }, "similar": [ { "slug": "2005-marchapril-data-for-examining-security-spending", "score": 0.326 }, { "slug": "2005-marchapril-ire-and-nicar-resources-for-war-security-coverage", "score": 0.289 }, { "slug": "2002-february-security-problems", "score": 0.175 }, { "slug": "2001-julyaugust-funding-schools", "score": 0.144 }, { "slug": "2002-february-poor-airport-security", "score": 0.137 } ], "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2005-marchapril-big-bucks-flow-to-rural-areas.html", "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/2005-marchapril-big-bucks-flow-to-rural-areas.json" }