Buying Q-Tips to fight terror

Buying Q-Tips to fight terror
Local agencies' use of U.S. aid questioned

Susan Carroll
The Arizona Republic
May. 11, 2006 12:00 AM

Arizona public safety agencies have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grant money on equipment they are not certified to use or to pay for projects with only a tenuous link to homeland security.

With little initial guidance and flush with money after the Sept. 11 attacks, police and fire departments statewide shored up budget shortfalls and bought things like ATVs, Q-Tips and $50,000 worth of binoculars with nearly $178 million in Homeland Security Department grants.

Despite what one small-town official described as a spending "frenzy," many local officials managed to put the money toward security priorities: shoring up communications, buying better protective gear for police and firefighters and purchasing mobile command centers for emergencies.
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But an Arizona Republic review of thousand of pages of records and receipts found that some local governments made many questionable purchases under the guise of homeland security, including $38 leather wallets for all Capitol Police officers and a $47 hat badge for the police chief.

Many small cities and towns that are unlikely targets for a terrorist attack received disproportionate amounts of money, often more per capita than Phoenix, Tucson or Mesa.

Consider:


• Gila County spent $93,000 to rent planes, snowmobiles and a horse to create more accurate assessor maps. Meanwhile, local law enforcement went without protective masks because it was too expensive to certify them.


• The police chief in Holbrook, population 5,100, was approved to spend $40,000 for a video surveillance system to monitor "potential terrorist targets," including a park, a water tower and intersections.


• Apache County bought a dozen 6X6 ATVs at more than $11,500 each, while a local fire department relied on 20-year-old air packs for its firefighters.

State officials responsible for administering the federal funds said personnel shortages led to lax oversight and poor tracking in the initial years. But they also said they followed federal guidelines and approved purchase lists and have made improvements since 2003. They also plan to add more staff.

In response to The Republic's investigation, Gov. Janet Napolitano has ordered a review of the Arizona Department of Emergency Management's handling of the funds. The state also plans to set up a formal site-monitoring program and create an online ordering and approval system.

'Boys with toys'
In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress allocated billions of dollars for the states to divvy up through the State Homeland Security Grant Program. States received money based on a formula roughly the same model used for transportation funding: Each state would get 0.75 percent of the funds, plus a share based on population.

The Phoenix area was identified as a high-risk city for a terrorist attack and was eligible for millions under another grant program, the Urban Area Security Initiative.

Frank Navarrette, Arizona's emergency management director, acknowledged that the department struggled to oversee the massive infusion of Homeland Security money, as Arizona's share grew from about $3 million in 2001 to more than $61million in 2003.

Each agency wanted "their own red firetruck in their own driveway, and they each wanted their own bomb squad," Navarrette said. "And that's natural, to say, 'I want to take care of my own turf.' "

By 2004, Arizona officials set up regional advisory committees to help cut down on duplication and waste and to ensure local governments bought compatible radio systems and equipment that was up to federal standards.

Nationwide, officials on the federal, state and local levels all tried to rein in the spending sprees, which had become at times chaotic and haphazard. Media reports surfaced about Washington, D.C., police buying leather jackets and a remote Alaskan town installing video surveillance.

"We basically spent money so we could have these first responders running around like boys with toys," said James Carafano, a senior fellow for homeland security at the conservative, Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation."In most cases, these are people spending money just to spend money. They're buying things that they would never buy but (that) are just kind of nice to have."

Oversight
The Homeland Security grants are designed to better equip first responders for a terrorist attack or major natural disaster. The federal government publishes updated guidelines each year that detail what equipment is acceptable but leaves the specifics about purchasing up to the state and local agencies.

In the first few years after Sept. 11, as long as the equipment was on the federal government's approved list, the state generally allowed the orders. Still, the state rejected some purchases, like multiple plasma-screen TVs, even though they were approved under the guidelines.

Four years after the terrorist attacks, Navarrette said the state staff handling the grant programs is still "overwhelmed." Three people administer the program full time, although Navarrette said the department is advertising for another position.

After Sept. 11, the state did not electronically track how much Homeland Security money was spent on specific types of equipment, from protective gear to bomb robots. The state kept thick binders and file folders for grant program receipts during the first few years, but some of those folders were empty.

The state could provide no documentation for site-monitoring visits or formal audits but said a review was launched in April in response to The Republic's investigation and will be finished by August.

Recently, the state required some agencies, including the Capitol Police, which spent $3,100 on wallets, badges and a chief's hat badge, to reimburse the government after inquiries from The Republic.

Navarrette said the state plans to investigate any suspect purchases, but he also cautioned that at times, homeland security is "in the eye of the beholder."

Gila County officials defended their decision to put a chunk of Homeland Security funds toward the mapping project, under way before the grants became available. Mariano Gonzalez, the Gila emergency management director, said the project could provide first responders with more-accurate maps and data when they respond to an emergency in a remote area.

And in Holbrook, the small town that received funds for video surveillance cameras, Chief D. Wayne Hartup said the money would go to monitor "critical government infrastructure."

"We've all been advised that potential (terrorism) targets would be government buildings, major intersections and water towers," he said.

Richard Guinn, deputy sheriff for Apache County, said the ATVs were ordered because "most of our county is extremely rural, and we needed vehicles that could move people in and out of remote areas." The state recently asked Apache County to reallocate the ATVs so they would all be put to use.

Stocking up
When the money first started pouring into the state after Sept. 11, some local governments stocked up on the basics, even though the grant program was not designed to fill gaps in local public safety budgets.

La Paz County stocked up like Y2K was coming again. The county bought 50 rolls of police and sheriff's barricade tape, 200 bottles of antiseptic hand cleanser and 46 traffic vests. Yuma expensed a rake, Q-Tips and a shoe brush.

Some purchases ended up in storage, like dozens of breathing masks bought for law enforcement in Gila County, including the Payson Police Department, which found it was too costly to certify officers with the required training and fit testing.

"This money was never supposed to be an entitlement to states to supplement their public safety needs," Carafano said. "State and local governments need to find a way to pay for the things that they're responsible for, and that's local public safety needs. That's their job."

Graham County bought 100 pairs of Fujinon binoculars worth more than $500 each, at the recommendation of a local planning committee. The binoculars went to every police officer and firefighter, and the highway foreman, the county engineer and a few folks in emergency management. Two pairs were given to Eastern Arizona College, where the two campus security officers have put them to use, but not for terrorism-related activity.

"We've had some problems with vandalism," said Bill Mulleneaux, chief of security for the college. "We've used them from strategic locations to see (suspects) graffitiing."

Apache County in northeastern Arizona bought a dozen 6X6 Polaris ATV Rangers that cost more than $11,500 each for law enforcement, fire agencies and the Public Works Department. One agency, the St. Johns Police Department, lobbied the county to trade their ATV for radio equipment, first-aid kits, GPS, binoculars and trauma kits.

"We hadn't had a use for it (the ATV) in two years," Chief Jim Zieler said. "I figured it was better for me to purchase something my guys could use every day."

Training funds
Money also went to training and education, most of it for hazardous materials and bomb squads. But Santa Cruz County sent a staff member who administers the grants to a "fundamentals of accounting" seminar. Yuma spent $1,000 on Yuma Area Ammonia Awareness Safety Day because some factories on the southern side of the border use ammonia.

Officials in Yavapai County held a drill simulating a terrorist attack in Cottonwood (population roughly 10,000) in March 2004. The mock attack involved a twin-engine plane with anthrax onboard crashing into Mingus Union High School. To make it more realistic, officials paid the school drama teacher $228 to put bloodlike makeup on students in the drill and paid $65 for a substitute teacher.

And the Phoenix Police Department bought hundreds of new Fruit of the Loom T-shirts and had them custom silk-screened with Homeland Security money to read: "I Survived a WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) Drill!" The T-shirts were partly a thank-you to volunteers, officials said, and partly a safety measure to identify participants.

Tightening spending
The 2006 grant guidelines for the State Homeland Security Grant Program require that states follow through on the promise to send funds to more at-risk areas. In some cases, a disproportionate amount of money has gone to rural areas, unlikely to be targeted by terrorists, Homeland Security analysts say.

In 2005, Phoenix received $1.1 million under the program, or roughly 78 cents a person through the program. Springerville, a town of 4,000 southeast of Flagstaff, received $155,000, about $38.75 per person.

"Are we going to have a 9/11 in Springerville, Arizona? No," said Max Sadler, the town's fire chief. "But we do have a major highway, and we still have a lot of other things that go through this town. I'm not asking for a million and half dollars for a hazardous-materials first-responder team.

"Is there waste? Yeah, I'm sure there is somewhere. It's just the American way, I guess. You see it all the time, and it makes it bad for people who are trying to survive."

Arizona is struggling to keep its share of Homeland Security grant funding, which has decreased by roughly one-third in the past two years. Navarrette said the regional advisory committees set up in 2004 are helping to ensure that any new purchases are in line with the state's overall security strategy.

"For this next year, we need to get away from buying gizmos," he said. "We bought a lot of equipment, a lot of good equipment that's been necessary. But I think we're to the point now we need to focus more on sustainability, more on training, more on programmatic goals."

Carafano said the public should decide where it wants money to go in the struggle to protect the country against a terrorist attack and prepare for natural disasters.

"The point is that people need to take a deep breath and figure out what they want their federal government to spend their money on," he said. "The fact is that every dollar that we spend buying a firetruck, or a hose or a TV camera for somebody is a dollar we could have spent on preventing terrorist acts to begin with."