W's cut in hazard mitigation program + effects in NC

http://www.indyweek.com/durham/2004-09-22/cover2.html

....

Almost immediately after assuming power, the Bush administration eliminated FEMA's innovative Project Impact grants, which were launched in 1997 to help lower spiraling disaster costs. In North Carolina, 11 communities received $2.195 million in Project Impact money for disaster plans ranging from home buyouts to improved weather warning systems. A project in the Triangle to create a regional system for identifying and addressing hazards had just gotten started when the Impact program ended. That effort, coordinated by the Triangle J Council of Governments, produced a stockpile of information, but no report or followup.

....

"Now that FEMA's mother agency is Homeland Security, they can't make those independent decisions they used to make," Kite says. "There's another whole web of individuals things have to go through. We finally said, 'We're doing it whether we get reimbursed or not.' "


Even some expenditures that would appear a natural for support under FEMA's new antiterrorism push may not get adequate funding.

Congressman Price has been especially concerned about the firefighter grants that had been managed by FEMA and are now under the Office of Domestic Preparedness. The Bush administration has tried to cut those grants for two years running. An amendment Price offered to keep the firefighter grants under FEMA--where he and others feel they will be safer from the budget ax--was defeated last year on a party-line vote.

more....

spelled out 9-22-04......after Katrina we can all see where we stand in the new W terrorism-homeland-security world