BY BILL MANNING
Following the Congressional Fire Service Caucus (CFSC) program and dinner in Washington, D.C., on April 30, e-mail servers sizzled with claims of great fire service victories on Capitol Hill. Nonsense. The straight scoop on recent political developments and current fire service status in Washington paints a far different picture.
We got back the 36 NFA classes. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Tom Ridge pledged the reinstatement of the 36 National Fire Academy classes that were to fall into Congress’ dustbin of unintended consequences. We’re back to square one on the NFA front, but the rest of the cuts to the United States Fire Administration remain in effect for the remainder of the federal fiscal year.
The Bush Administration wants to cut the FIRE Act. Secretary Ridge, in his CFSC dinner keynote speech, used one of the oldest tricks in the book: bring the audience to its feet in applause while you deliver the bad news, which, in this case, is the Administration’s aim to slash back the 2004 FIRE Act grant program to $500 million—a $250 million cut from our current level and $400 million less than the 2004 congressional authorization. The fire service now wears the humiliating distinction of being the only “interest group” in America to cheer proposed reductions to its most critical and hard-won program.
It’s okay to maintain the federal-to-local grants for cops but not for firefighters. Local police departments still get in the neighborhood of $10 billion a year in direct federal-to-local grant monies from the COPS program. But when it comes to the fire service, the Administration is quick to throw up the “fire is a local issue” shield.
The cops will administer the FIRE Act grant program. Some in the fire service have misinterpreted Secretary Ridge’s remark of “not changing” the FIRE Act to mean that the program will remain under the generalship of the USFA. That is not the case. As Ridge testified the morning after the CFSC dinner before the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, the Office of Domestic Preparedness (ODP)—not the USFA—will administer the FIRE Act program starting federal fiscal year 2004. Ridge’s remarks referred only to the current peer review selection mechanism for making grants, which he promised to maintain.
It’s time to issue a “severe threat” warning for the FIRE Act, and duct tape won’t work this time. ODP is a law enforcement-based (formerly Department of Justice) agency that’s “politically hostile” to the fire service and has full management of most terrorism response monies (currently about $3.6 billion) that pass from feds to the states and local agencies. Combine this with the Bush Administration’s resistance to direct federal-to-local fire grants (due in large part to its adamant opposition to federal dollars for local fire staffing); its previous attempts to zero-fund the FIRE Act for 2002; its current goal to decrease FIRE Act funding for 2004; and new congressional language in the FIRE Act that adds terrorism response to the list of allowable purchase categories (therein creating the justification for ODP control and allowing the Administration to repackage the FIRE Act as part of its War on Terrorism), and it’s easy to see that the existence of the FIRE Act is severely threatened.
As the Administration seeks to diminish and redistribute the FIRE Act monies, municipalities are slashing local fire department budgets. We’re losing stations and members, and the terrorism response allocations are not set up to compensate for it.
It’s okay for the cops to distribute federal terrorism response monies for fire agencies through the states but not okay for the fire service to do it. That was made painfully clear when ODP sucked up the $6 million the NFA used for its state-fire-agency-delivered terrorism training outreach program for local fire departments. We’re not getting that money (or that program) back.
The bulk of terrorism response money’s going to go through the states—get used to it. In many cases, the fire service power base at the state level is leaner than it is in Washington. Secretary Ridge is right when he says, “You’ve got to call on some of that money.” You do. But it will be interesting to see how much fire departments will receive after the states take their 20 percent of the terrorism response monies and all the other groups—none of which carry the level of risk local fire departments do in a terrorist incident response—queue up with hands outstretched. It was clear from the CFSC event that few, if any, local fire departments outside of the big cities have seen any terrorism money yet.
DHS won’t utilize the training capabilities of our state and regional fire academies. The DHS gravy train already has pulled out of the station: Federally financed terrorism training, managed by ODP, will occur at (currently five) locations within a federally funded terrorism training “consortium” that serves as a retirement home for law enforcement and military personnel. Follow the money.
Our national voice still is minimized in the DHS structure. Secretary Ridge indeed promised to keep the USFA administrator position a presidential appointment, confirmed by the Senate. There’s only one catch: The position does not exist in the DHS table of organization. The fire service does not—and unless something changes, will not—occupy a prominent position within DHS. The word “fire” does not occur except at lower levels within the system. While Chief David Paulison currently holds the position of “Preparedness Director,” with management responsibilities including the USFA and certain Federal Fire Programs—small-budget stuff—there are no guarantees that the fire service will occupy that position in the future. We are a minimal, small-budget player in DHS—meaning we have a minimal voice in Washington.
Marketing is still our biggest problem. We’re way behind the curve on two fronts: data and a united public voice. For all the money spent on revamping and reiterating NFIRS since 1977, the USFA has not produced a shred of usable data for 27 years, relying still on statistics from the annual NFPA survey. That’s a disgrace. We need data to support the national fire and rescue response picture, and we need it yesterday. Second, it’s high time for the Big Three fire service organizations to develop and execute a national marketing campaign strategy, targeting all national media outlets, to bring our case to the American public. It’s one thing to testify at Senate committee hearings. It’s entirely another to make the case on “Larry King Live.” Of course, we’ll have to get the International Association of Fire Chiefs to stop sending out press releases shouting “Fire Service Hits Home Run on Capitol Hill” when all we managed was a bunt single at most. Oh, yes, and someone has to tell the International Association of Fire Fighters that the SAFER Act’s four-year federal funding plan for career fire personnel is like my buying a fully loaded BMW without any payments for the first four years. After the four years are up, do I mortgage the house to keep the car?
It’s time to quit the “first responder” charade. This all started when some of our own people began marketing their “firefighters are EMS providers who sometimes fight fires” malarkey. It got worse from there, lumping firefighters, partly for the sake of gaining parity, into the common and nebulous group of “rescuers” and then “first responders.” We are firefighters, not “first responders,” on the front lines of every conceivable type of emergency response known to mankind. We have a separate and distinct identity from all other “first responders,” and we carry the highest level of risk. It’s about time we began marketing our uniqueness so as to obtain the level of funding consistent with that uniqueness and the unique risks you assume. It’s interesting to note that very recently law enforcement has begun to set itself apart from the “first responder” group by describing its members as “first preventers” in the war on terrorism.
Most representatives in Congress have no idea who does what. It’s painfully clear that our representatives making the big money decisions really don’t understand how emergency response works in the real world—they’re just listening to the loudest voices (which aren’t yours). They don’t understand that providing brand new computers for patrol cars and masks for armed police in short-sleeved shirts doesn’t add all that much in the way of terrorism response preparedness. Maybe someone should tell Congress that most people in law enforcement wouldn’t know OSHA 1910.120 if they fell over it. Man, this whole thing is grand larceny—or politics, same thing.
The Congressional Fire Service Caucus doesn’t mean you have the power—quite the opposite. No doubt the CFSC, the largest caucus on Capitol Hill with some 320 members, has offered the fire service opportunities we didn’t have 16 years ago. But caucuses in themselves admit (and seek to remedy) political weakness to one degree or another. We’ve got to leverage off the Caucus to the point where, 16 years from now, you’ve outgrown it. And if rank-and-file firefighters don’t get involved in this process in grassroots fashion, that will never happen.
Either we make a federal case out of this or nothing will change. In the meantime, the politicians and Beltway opportunists will continue to exploit your “do more with less, no matter what” attitude. They’ve been relying on it all along.
