New Jersey Homeland Security Spending
August 16th, 2005 | Published in Fed Data, State Data
Rick Hepp of the Newark Star-Ledger analyzed state and federal spending on homeland security in New Jersey, finding that politics can make a big difference:
Somerset County towns in the past three years have received more than $2.7 million in federal Homeland Security grants designed for “first responders,” but only $235,000 from New Jersey.
The state money was controlled by the governor’s office, often as a way to reward Democratic Party loyalists. That was not a good equation for Republican-dominated Somerset County, which got 1 percent of the state grants between 2002 and 2005.
The imbalance in Somerset extends to other counties. Atlantic, Burlington and Hunterdon — counties dominated by Republican legislators — all received hefty shares of federal money but little or no state grants.
One of the examples why cross-jurisdictional analysis can be very revealing.