Big Fire Departments Want Larger Share of Grants for Radios, Other Equipment
Grants to fire departments nationwide under a federal program that pays for interoperable communications and other equipment are going to small fire departments on a disproportionate basis, Kevin O'Connor, assistant to the general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, said in testimony during a House Science Committee hearing. O'Connor and other witnesses also urged Congress, during a hearing by the Technology and Innovation Subcommittee, to keep the FIRE Grant program at current levels.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
The hearing comes at a critical time for the FIRE program. The Obama administration in May proposed funding the FIRE grant program at only $170 million in FY 2010, a cut of nearly 70 percent from FY 2009. The money instead would be reallocated to the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response program, to pay for firefighter salaries instead of equipment. That would preserve some firefighter jobs at a time when many local governments face deep budget cuts.
Communications equipment has been one of the biggest uses for FIRE grant money, accounting for more than $300 million in FY 2004-07. Last year, $750 million was available for both programs, while departments filed nearly $4 billion in grant applications. Little of the testimony focused on this change. However, witnesses agreed that the program in general plays a critical role for fire departments.
“Today, we ask our fire service to do a lot more than fight fires. We ask them to be the first line of defense in the full range of ordinary and extraordinary situations,” said Curt Varone, division manager for the National Fire Protection Association. “As we place more demands on them, we must be willing to provide them with the resources to do the job. We know from our analysis that the fire service is woefully underfunded. The Fire Grant programs are working, are moving the fire service in the right direction and must continue.”
O'Connor said “the most significant problem” facing the FIRE grant program is the uneven distribution of funds. He said all departments, including New York City’s with almost 15,000 firefighters and emergency medical personnel, are limited to receiving $2.75 million a year. His group, the IAFF, has proposed a sliding scale under which the largest departments could get a bigger share of the funds, up to $10 million annually for major cities.
“The lion’s share of funds are awarded to departments that protect a subset of the population,” he said. “According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 68.4 percent of funds awarded under the FIRE grant program since the program’s inception have been awarded to rural areas, while only ten percent have been awarded to urban areas.” Under questioning by Rep. Daniel Lipinski, D-Ill., O'Connor said, “We're certainly not looking to tilt the balance to the other side, we just want equity.”
But Jack Carriger, chief of the Stayton Fire Department in northwest Oregon, said the grants are most important to small and volunteer departments, which otherwise often rely on fundraising drives to pay for new equipment. “Of all DHS programs, the various firefighter assistance grants stand alone in serving communities of all sizes and distributing funding based on need rather than population,” Carriger said. The program “is particularly important to volunteer departments because it addresses the pressing needs that represent the largest proportion of their budgets -- equipment, training and apparatus expenditures.”