State Homeland Security Panel Rips Colorado's Efforts

Colorado is not as safe as it could be because the Owens administration has spent $120 million in federal homeland security grants without setting priorities, the chairman of the state Senate Homeland Security Committee said Friday.

As the committee issued a 60-page report on its hearings since January, Chairman Sen. Dan Grossman, D-Denver, said, "Instead of strategically identifying vulnerabilities and specific needs and directing resources to address them, the executive branch has based its homeland security policy on the availability of grants. That is backwards, and it is wrong."

Gov. Bill Owens' press secretary, Dan Hopkins, said committee members were ill-informed. "They began with preconceived notions and never let the facts get in their way," he said.

Michael Beasley, Owens' point man on homeland security, said he prefers a broad-based approach to anti-terrorism projects, giving all 11 goals in the state's homeland security strategy the same weight.

The committee set priorities of its own, including ensuring that all emergency responders can talk to each other on their still incompatible radios. It also called for more speed in adding protection to likely targets, such as airports, dams and power grids.

The written report to the full Senate from three Democrats and two Republicans was straightforward in tone, despite months of acrimony between the committee and the Owens administration, which has claimed homeland security as solely under its control.

But the legislative committee still called for a clearly different path than the one Owens is pursuing. Beasley said the call for statewide priorities was "an attack on the bottom-up model," where the state's first responders ask for grant money for what they think is most important.

"I believe our first responders know better what will meet our security needs, rather than the people in the state Capitol," he said.

The committee and the Owens administration agree funds should be found to finish the long-sought statewide emergency radio system. Beasley said he allocated $13 million in state oil and gas revenues to the project, and he expects it to expand its coverage to most of the state by the end of this year.

But some agencies do not want to join because it remains incompatible with the radio systems used by federal and other agencies that are critical partners for many mountain sheriffs.

As a result, the committee called for a state employee to be charged with exploring the other technological fixes.

Beasley rejected that, saying, "I don't need any more chiefs in this tribe."

He also objects strongly to the committee's proposal to create a single state Homeland Security Department.

Hopkins criticized committee members for not showing up Friday for a tour of the state's new homeland security headquarters. But Grossman said the panel was not invited on the tour and said lawmakers would like to see the facility.