By Dale Russakoff and Rene Sanchez
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 1, 2003; Page A01

In the port of Philadelphia yesterday, President Bush touted his quest for homeland security as part of a grand struggle for freedom, alongside the war in Iraq. But in financially strapped states and cities where much of the battle is being waged, mayors and governors are resorting to begging and borrowing to pull it off.

Responding to the recently elevated national terror threat level, Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn deployed scores of police officers to secure Los Angeles International Airport, target of a foiled millennium terrorist bomb plot. But with heightened citywide security costing $1 million a week and a budget deficit expected to exceed $200 million, Hahn couldn't do it alone. He asked the state to send in the National Guard.

The state, however, was staggering under a deficit topping $30 billion. Already, Gov. Gray Davis was moving to raise taxes, lay off thousands of schoolteachers and cut half a million adults off Medicaid. Still, Davis sent 50 National Guardsmen to LAX. Chalk up $100,000 a week more to cut elsewhere.

"Things had to be done for safety," said Bill Fujioka, Los Angeles' chief administrative officer. "But we don't have many options left."

The effort to secure the homeland is being carried out and financed increasingly by levels of government least able to pay for it: states, now facing their worst fiscal crises since World War II, and cities, which rely heavily on states for aid.

Governors and mayors said they are not skimping on public safety, but as a result, they are skimping on much else. "These responsibilities are unprecedented, and it's an extra cost burden when none of us can absorb it," said Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R). "If you put extra personnel on bridges, you're taking money from public schools or telling scholarship students they can't go to college or taking medicine from elderly people. We're beyond the point of inconveniencing people. We're close to hurting them."

Last week, when President Bush unveiled a supplemental budget for the war in Iraq, including $2 billion for states and cities to step up security, governors and mayors of both parties declared it inadequate. Those funds, intended to cover costs for increased security during wartime, would come in addition to money other federal agencies are distributing to states and cities for health, transportation and other security needs.

New York Gov. George Pataki (R), who rarely challenges Bush publicly, released a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and held news conferences saying the allocation formula "doesn't properly recognize New York and other places that are symbols of American freedom."

The Bush proposal set aside $500 million for enhanced wartime security costs in all states through June, of which $50 million was reserved for major metropolitan areas. But Pataki released data showing that $50 million would cover exactly four weeks of stepped-up security costs in New York state and New York City alone.

The state, which faces a budget deficit of more than $11 billion, is spending $7.5 million a week for extra security at subways, international airports, the Canadian border, the port of New York and New York City's many symbolic targets. And New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city, struggling to close a $3.4 billion deficit, is spending $5 million a week to post heavily armed units at potential targets such as Times Square, conduct bioterrorism detection and prepare police in all five boroughs to operate as independent departments in the event the Manhattan headquarters is disabled.

Asked about the burden on states and cities, Department of Homeland Security spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the Bush administration "believes this is a shared responsibility, and we're going to help do much of it." However, he acknowledged that the administration has not figured out what share of the responsibility the federal government is paying -- or should pay.

Determining the appropriate federal share is "one of the thorniest questions we are going to face," said House Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.).

Just how thorny was clear in the initial round of Homeland Security grants released this year -- about $600 million nationally. Despite a concentration of likely terror targets in population centers, smaller states received much more money per capita than large ones, with California and New York running last. California received $1.33 per person and New York $1.38, while Wyoming got $9.78, Vermont, $8.15 and Alaska, $7.97. The national average was $3.29. (The study was done by New York City and compared the largest states with the smallest; it did not include Maryland or Virginia.)

Pataki and New York Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles Schumer, both Democrats, are calling for a funding system based on the threat to each jurisdiction.

"Any other formula defies logic and makes a mockery of the country's counterterrorism efforts," Bloomberg yesterday told a commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.

But Johndroe said the $2 billion supplemental budget will be distributed mostly on the original formula, which comes from the USA Patriot Act, passed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Among the formula's authors was then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), whose state gets more than six times as much money per capita as California under the formula. A spokesman for Leahy said smaller states need more money because their communities do not have large standing police forces to respond to emergencies. "Small states have security concerns, too," the spokesman said. "Protection of Vermont's northern border benefits the whole country. What if a terrorist got across and went to New York?"

The remark underlines another thorny issue: federal versus state responsibility. The federal government -- not states and cities -- is responsible for protecting the nation's borders, although state and local governments regularly have provided reinforcements. Under the Constitution, it is unclear whether homeland security -- a concept unheard of until 18 months ago -- is a federal or state responsibility.

Pietro Nivola, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a scholar of federalism, said it appears to fall "under the national government's responsibility to see to the common defense. It just happens to be on the homeland."

Governors agree. At the National Governors Association winter meeting in February, they voted unanimously to include homeland security -- along with Medicaid, special education and Bush's No Child Left Behind schools initiative -- as an "unfunded mandate" on states with which they need more federal help.

The elevated threat level, and resulting costs to states, has thrown added uncertainty into chaotic budget negotiations in state legislatures struggling to close widening deficits. Even before the latest terror alert, each month has brought additional states announcing that revenue was running lower than expected, resulting in higher deficits and requiring deeper budget cuts. Surging homeland security costs exacerbate the pressures.

"Some state revenue projectors are beginning to throw up their hands and say they can't predict revenues in this environment," said Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. "They're holding their breath, hoping they won't get blindsided."

The budget crises have strained state and local law enforcement agencies, and the Homeland Security grants that were supposed to help them have been held up by red tape and reached state capitals only last month.

A survey by the Boston Globe found that the 10 largest police departments in Massachusetts have 424 fewer officers than they did a year ago and will lose at least 50 more by July 1 as a result of state budget cuts in local aid. The state has received its allotted $11.7 million in homeland security grants, but Gov. Mitt Romney (R) and other state officials estimate their costs at almost five times that amount.

Montgomery County also has received one-fifth of what it calculates as its homeland security needs. "The economy is in a downturn, our revenues are slipping, and it's much more difficult to provide the normal services people expect from us. And now we have this additional homeland security responsibility," said County Executive Douglas M. Duncan. "Our partners in the federal government need to help us much more than they have been."

Los Angeles has grown so desperate waiting for federal money that last week it reluctantly raided a municipal trust fund for $4.5 million and bought 1,000 chemical protection suits for firefighters and police. The city also just cut staffing at its 24-hour emergency operations center partly because money for security is so tight.

New Haven, Conn., Mayor John DeStefano Jr. who is president of the National League of Cities, said his city has yet to receive any money and has been able to outfit only about 10 percent of his 300 firefighters with protective equipment for responding to a chemical or biological attack.

The Homeland Security funds are intended to help states prepare to respond to an emergency and also help them pay overtime and other costs associated with higher threat levels. But it is left to the states how they will prepare for and respond to threats.

One difficulty in gauging the federal contribution is that there is no uniform measuring system for state and local costs. After Ridge raised the national terror threat level to "orange," or high risk, and asked states to protect sensitive sites in what he called Operation Liberty Shield, Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) instructed all state and local law enforcement agencies to log their related overtime and other costs so he can submit them to Ridge if help becomes available. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) did the same.

In West Virginia, state homeland security spokesman Randy Coleman said the costs were not as extensive because no sites in his state rank as likely terror targets. "Terrorists would be more likely to hide in our mountainous terrain than to attack us," he said.

But one never knows. And if terror strikes there, he said, West Virginia would be in dire straits, because it has no communications system linking its first-responders.

"It's a monstrosity of a cost, and we can't even begin to imagine getting the help we need," he said.

Russakoff reported from New York and Sanchez from Los Angeles. Staff writers Christopher Lee and Jo Becker and correspondent Pamela Ferdinand in Boston contributed to this report.