First responders awarded additional $400M in funding

The growing pool of federal dollars for interoperable public-safety communications grants could get even bigger, even though the nearly $3 billion spent to date has largely failed to improve first- responder communications around the country.
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, an independent Democrat from Connecticut, and ranking member Susan Collins (R-Maine) added $400 million for interoperable public-safety communications to a nonbinding budget measure. The Senate passed budget resolution for fiscal 2008 provides a blueprint for follow-up spending bills.
The budget resolution restores Bush administration cuts to key homeland- security programs to 2007 levels and provides an additional $1.4 billion above the president’s request of $46.4 billion for the Department of Homeland Security.
In addition to the $400 million earmarked for first-responder communications and the $2.9 billion already spent on public-safety interoperability grants by the DHS, the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration is responsible for a $1 billion grant program to enable wireless communications among firefighters, police, medics and others during emergencies.
In a letter to Michael Bopp, associate director for general government programs at the Commerce Department, key lawmakers warned the NTIA not to surrender control of the grant program to DHS. The NTIA has contracted with DHS, which has a large-scale grant-making apparatus in place, to manage the $1 billion public-safety interoperability grant program.