Oklahoma Homeland Security Funds Cut By $5 Million

Wednesday, July 18th 2007, 2:22 pm

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- The state Homeland Security office announced Wednesday it is getting $14.2 million from the federal government to fund anti-terrorism projects, a decrease of 27%.

Officials were disappointed and surprised by the size of the reduction.

"I can tell you that on our application that was reviewed by our peers, all of our scores were above the national average," said Brook Borden, spokeswoman for the state agency.

She said the agency anticipated getting a small reduction for 2007, since the appropriation approved by Congress was down slightly from previous year.

"But a reduction of $5 million when you scored well during the review process was interesting," Borden said.

The state got $19.4 million for homeland security in 2006. About $5 million of the money from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will go to the state homeland security program. About $4.8 million will go to security efforts in urban areas; $3.6 million is set aside for law enforcement terrorism prevention and the rest will go to metropolitan medical response and the Citizens Corps program.

Officials also said the state is getting $11 million from the Department of Commerce to upgrade its communications program for law enforcement officers and emergency responders such as fire fighters. That money is going toward construction of a new system that will allow personnel from different law enforcement and emergency agencies to communicate with each other, something that does not now occur in many instances.