Weiner Pushes To End Waste Of Security Funds

WASHINGTON — Rep. Anthony Weiner is enlisting the help of a Republican from Arizona in his fight against wasteful spending and misallocation of federal homeland security funds.

Mr. Weiner, a Democrat who represents parts of Brooklyn and Queens, and Rep. Jeff Flake, whose district includes Mesa, Ariz., plan to introduce a bill in the House that would require localities that receive anti-terrorism grants to report publicly how they are spending that money.

The push comes amid complaints from New York officials that the Bush administration annually shortchanges the city while doling out security funds to small cities and towns under little or no demonstrated threat of terrorist attack.

Announcing the bill yesterday, Mr. Weiner turned to his well-worn list of spending "boondoggles," from a $36,200 grant to protect bingo halls in Kentucky to $202,000 to buy security cameras for a fishing village in Alaska, population 2,400.

"If we reach the point where a fishing village in Alaska is the target of Al Qaeda, we are all in very deep trouble," Mr. Weiner said.

Joining Mr. Weiner was Mr. Flake, who took the unusual step of criticizing funding that his own district received, pointing out a $300,000 grant for "light synchronization."

"Why in the world they need that from homeland security funds I don't know," he said.

The bill would aim to increase transparency of the grants by mandating that recipients issue quarterly reports to the Department of Homeland Security detailing how they spent the money and that the department publish the information on its Web site.

Defending the grant programs, the department yesterday acknowledged that occasionally funds are not spent wisely, but said they are spent effectively "99%" of the time.