Beware, terrorists: Union is ready for you

Last summer, the senators from Connecticut cosponsored an amendment that would have taken a $4.5 million appropriation for aviation security and given the money to local fire departments.

The money was supposed to be used for screening operations and explosive detection systems, according to The Washington Examiner, which reprinted a portion of the amendment.

The Examiner, a conservative publication, made much of the amendment to embarrass Dodd, who, it said, “deserves to be singled out here because the firefighters union is a pet constituency of his,†but the paper had to acknowledge the amendment was cosponsored by Lieberman, whom it presumably holds in greater affection than Dodd for reasons we needn’t bring up here.

I bring it up here, not to embarrass Dodd, but to embarrass both of them. In addition, Lieberman, as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, is holding hearings this month into the failed attempt to bomb that airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day and has vowed to find out why the latest scanning technology isn’t in every airport.

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And so, when Chairman Lieberman gavels his hearing to order this month, he may want to start things off by looking at the way Congress spends all that homeland security money. If he does, he may discover there wasn’t enough money to buy all those airport scanners because Congress has diverted too much homeland security money to popular projects in the old home state, including his.

Connecticut Congressmen seem partial to investing homeland security funds in fire engines and other firehouse items but they also indulge in bigger things. Our seven-person delegation brought home earmarks worth more than $350 million in the 2008-09 fiscal year, according to LegiStorm.com, a government spending watchdog. Earmarks are projects slipped into major pieces of legislation and become law, not on their own merits. They are usually nice things to have but not necessarily vital to the greater good, like finding a terrorist with explosives in his underwear before he heads for Detroit.

Connecticut earmarks labeled “defense†or “military construction†include $11 million for an indoor small arms range in New London and a $15 million downtown redevelopment project in Waterbury, worthy projects, perhaps, but hardly as vital as the latest airport scanning technology, to pick one at random.

Lieberman’s committee might also want to revisit the highly regarded report of that bipartisan 9/11 Commission, which specifically warned Congress against this misuse of homeland security funds. The commission said funding should be based on an assessment of risks and vulnerabilities that considered “such factors as population, population density, vulnerability and the presence of critical infrastructure within each state; Congress should not use this money as a pork barrel.â€

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“Population density, vulnerability and the presence of critical infrastructure†certainly didn’t have much to do with grants Dodd and Lieberman proudly announced to fire departments in metropolises like Farmington, Woodstock and Union last year.

Union, the state’s least populous town, has 693 people living on its 29.8 square miles. That’s 24 souls per square mile, also the smallest in the state. (Hartford, for example, has 7025 people per square mile.) Its “critical infrastructure†in need of protection must be the state parks that occupy a third of Union’s land.

But if the terrorists march on the Quiet Corner, Union will be ready.

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.