Press Release - Perry Is a Dead Beat Governor

Press Release - Perry Is a Dead Beat Governor

Plays Shell Game with Homeland Security Money & Safety

Democratic gubernatorial nominee Chris Bell today criticized Rick Perry's mishandling of Homeland Security funds. Bell's outrage echoes the recent outcries of Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth and Corpus Christi local officials.

Federal law requires that states give 80% of homeland security grants to localities, including cities and counties. According to the Governor's Division of Emergency Management in 2006 only 63% of Texas' share of Federal Homeland Security grants were offered to localities. This would cut up to $260,000 next year for Dallas, and Corpus Christi would lose as much as two thirds of their homeland security budget. Even worse, only 25% of law enforcement and terrorism prevention money was offered to cities and counties.

Federal law also states that Texas has 60 days to allocate its federal homeland security funding to localities. This year, Texas received its homeland security money from the federal government in June, but failed to allocate the funding to cities and counties until late August.

As a result, cities such as Houston, Dallas, and Corpus Christi are left with shortages of crucial money for law enforcement programs and not enough time to evaluate their local security needs and request funding.

"Rick Perry issued his ‘Budget Reform Initiative' and claims he wants ‘truth in spending' and budget transparency, but time and again—state park fees, hunting and fishing permits, specialty license plates, the gas tax, the system benefit fund, and now with our Homeland Security money—he is hijacking money from its intended purpose for pet projects. It is outrageous hypocrisy from an arrogant governor's office," said Bell.

"It's all just a shell game, and Texans can't afford the cost of his corruption. At a time when we should focus on securing our ports and our border, Rick Perry is shortchanging local law enforcement to fund pet projects and putting our largest cities in danger. Perry claims to be making Texas more secure, but is actually dismantling it from the inside."

And to add insult to insecurity, Perry's misdirection of these funds benefits the client of a lobbyist who contributed to his campaign. In August 2006, Perry announced plans to take homeland security money away from Texas' cities and counties to fund two law enforcement data programs already in place in most communities. In September 2005, a $1MM contract was awarded to Kentucky based Appriss to handle the data exchange programs, Texas Data Exchange System and Live Scan. Between May 2002 and August 2005, Appriss lobbyist and Bush Pioneer, Dean McWilliams, contributed $4,500 to Governor Perry.

http://www.chrisbell.com/release/101306_perryhomelandsecurity