BANGOR – A high-ranking official from the Office of Homeland Security was in Bangor on Tuesday to emphasize the importance of state and local involvement in the fight against terrorism. There are roles for individual citizens as well, he said.

“Terrorism is not just a New York City or Washington, D.C., problem,” said Duncan Campbell, director of Intergovernmental Affairs at the White House Office on Homeland Security. “Our homeland won’t be safe until every community is safe.”

The pipe bombs placed in mailboxes in Nebraska, Illinois, Iowa, Colorado and Texas over the past few days “make it evident that no place is safe from terrorist attack,” Campbell told participants of this week’s Homeland Security Planning Conference at the Maine Air National Guard Base in Bangor.

Campbell spoke Tuesday on behalf of Tom Ridge, the nation’s first director of homeland security.

The four-day conference, which began Monday, brought together nearly 80 state, county and local leaders, as well as representatives from several trade associations. The group is charged with developing a vision for Maine’s homeland security in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Co-sponsored by Gov. Angus King, who also spoke Tuesday, and the Maine National Guard, the gathering is designed to formulate state policies for dealing with terrorism. By the end of the conference, the group will have created a blueprint for managing any future attacks.

As part of that blueprint, King asked those attending to pay attention to detail and break down any remaining barriers between agencies charged with protecting the public.

“We can’t have turf,” King said. “If we were to have an incident like this because the Kennebec County sheriffs were too good to work with the state police, … that would be a tragedy of the highest order.”

But even before an incident were to occur, those charged with developing the state’s plan need to anticipate the terrorists’ next moves, King said.

“We have to put ourselves in the heads of our opponents,” King said. “We’ve got to think like somebody who wants to screw up our society … and then prevent it.”

In this 20-minute address, King also put the bulk of the financial responsibility for the state’s homeland security efforts squarely on the shoulders of the federal government.

President Bush established the Office of Homeland Security and the Homeland Security Council last fall in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. Ridge, who was elected twice as governor of Pennsylvania, was given the mission of developing and coordinating a comprehensive national strategy to protect the United States from terrorism. Campbell has been with Ridge since 1993 and served as his deputy chief of staff.

On Ridge’s recommendation, the president proposed $38 billion for national security in fiscal year 2003 – and that’s just the initial investment, Campbell said. Once a national strategy has been developed, more money will be needed to fund it.

How much of that funding, still subject to congressional approval, will make its way to Maine remains to be seen. How the funds are distributed also will be determined by Congress. However, Campbell said, the office hopes to begin disbursing the funds as soon as the new federal fiscal year begins in October.

That was little comfort to the county and local emergency management and response officials, who said their budgets already were straining under the state and local emergency protocol already in place.

Lauding Maine’s willingness to take the lead on securing its homeland, Campbell also said individual Americans can do their part by joining Bush’s USA Freedom Corps, which encourages citizens to fight the war on terrorism by volunteering to improve their communities. One of the program’s components, the Citizen Corps, includes five national programs through which Americans can participate directly in homeland security efforts based in their own communities.

Coordinated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Citizen Corps programs include Community Emergency Response Teams, Medical Reserve Corps, Neighborhood Watch groups, Operation TIPS (which stands for Terrorism Information and Preventive System) and Volunteers in Police Service, also known as VIPS.

Also on Tuesday, the group resumed work on a vision statement in which members sought to strike a balance between security and civil liberties.