by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
The City has picked up some lobbying help in its attempts to secure direct defense funding from the Department of Homeland Security.
The American Bar Association is preparing a letter, which urges support from Florida House members for a pair of bills that would allow the City to directly fund emergency first responders.
“Since Sept. 11, states and local governments have struggled to share the responsibility to ensure that their citizens are safe from terrorist attack,” said an ABA draft letter making its way around City Hall. “Even with increased funding from Congress, problems remain with funding first responders.”
The ABA’s request for more direct funding echoes similar requests from municipalities nationwide, including Jacksonville. The City’s emergency preparedness chief said previously that routing homeland security funds through the State legislature prevented adequate first responder funding.
Chip Patterson gave the State high marks for including City and County input in developing a statewide strategy. However, he said that strategy was largely reactionary. Preventative measures are best conceived and implemented locally, said Patterson, and Jacksonville has not received funding to put them in place.
“Primarily, a city needs technology — communications technology, camera systems, data gathering systems, alert and warning systems — to overcome the advantage of secrecy and surprise that a terror group might have,” said Patterson. “Currently, the way the State is set up, we can’t get the funds to make that happen.”
Instead, the State has spent federal money to provide cities like Jacksonville with response training and equipment. Since Sept. 11, Patterson said the City has received search-and-rescue team training; its hospitals given protective and decontamination equipment to protect doctors and patients from chemical, biological or radioactive attacks; and regional caches of pharmaceuticals have been compiled all at State expense.
Where the State comes up short, said Patterson, is in providing cities with money to spend at their own discretion. Jacksonville officials know the City’s strengths and its particular vulnerabilities, said Patterson, and would be better able to direct dollars toward the City’s weak spots.
City lobbyists, including Dana Brown, Brad Thoburn and Policy Chief Steve Diebenow, have received copies of the ABA draft. The ABA invited Brown to attend a January meeting with Homeland Security officials in Washington, D.C. However, Brown will sit the meeting out at Thoburn’s request despite the seemingly convergent interests of the City and the ABA.
In its letter, the ABA echoes Patterson’s comments.
“The biggest obstacle in the process is getting direct funding for local jurisdictions, because most of the available grants go directly to the states instead of localities,” reads the letter. “Further, there are no standards for the distribution of funds to ensure a baseline of safety across several jurisdictions.”
Direct funding, claims the ABA, is essential to a municipality’s emergency preparedness, its ability to respond to an attack and its recovery once an attack has happened.