Rep. Vito Fossella, of Staten Island, joined the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Peter King, of Long Island, yesterday to call for increased homeland security money for New York City.

They urged the Senate to agree to changes in the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism – USA Patriot – Act that would allocate most of the State Homeland Security Grant funds on the basis of risk, not population. The risk based funding is in keeping with the recommendations of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

Under the present formula, the Department of Homeland Security splits about 40% of the grant money equally among the states. It distributes the remaining 60% according to population.

“Congress should be sending resources to fight terrorism where they are needed most, not based on arbitrary formulas. Changing the formula would send hundreds of millions of additional dollars to New York City to fight the war on terrorism,” Mr. Fossella said.

The House passed a bill in July, which it later added as an amendment to the Patriot Act reauthorization bill, which would allocate 85% of the funding based on states’ threat and vulnerability to terrorist attack level, and the consequences a successful attack would have. The remainder would be split equally among the states. Mr. Fossella and Mr. King, both Republicans, strongly advocated for the bills, as did other members of New York’s delegation. Senators Clinton and Schumer support the change as well.

The Senate passed its version of the Patriot Act reauthorization bill without the amendment, in part due to opposition from Senators Lieberman, a Democrat of Connecticut, and Collins, a Republican of Maine.

Whether the Patriot Act includes the amendment will be decided by the conference committee, which will negotiate a compromise between the two versions of the bill that both houses must then approve.

Mr. Fossella and Mr. King were optimistic about the amendment’s chances.

“The momentum is going in the right direction,” said Mr. Fossella, adding that a few senators had changed their positions to support the amendment.

“Early next year is when serious negotiations will begin,” he said. If Senators Collins and Lieberman get on board, “the rest of the senate will follow,” he said.

Mr. Fossella and Mr. King blamed pork barrel politics for lawmakers’ resistance to the changes.

“It’s easy to fall victim to parochial politics and run back home and say this is how much money we brought back. I think when it comes to this issue, every American, regardless of what state you’re in, should be … saying, ‘Let’s send money to where it belongs, let’s send it to where the threats are, and let’s take a pass for once on pork barrel politics,'” Mr. Fossella said.

If the amendment is not included in the final version of the new Patriot Act, he added, he and other lawmakers would continue to fight for a change in the allocations.

Last year, the Department of Homeland Security distributed $1.1 billion in state homeland security grants, according to a spokesman for Mr. Fossella, Thomas Quaadman. This year Congress allocated $550 million for the program, he said.