AUGUSTA – Gov. Angus King has approved a draft homeland security plan for Maine, but he acknowledged the state does not have the resources to implement most of the nine objectives set out in the document.

“What we are going to have to do is use existing resources,” King said. “This comes just as we are dealing with the [state] budget problems, but there are things we have to do.”

King said the first objective in the plan is to identify the various threats the state may face and to assess each of them. He said several assessments were done last fall by teams made up of state troopers and National Guard soldiers.

“We are getting some federal money in, but not in all categories,” he said. “We have gotten significant funds for the bioterrorism area, but in other areas we will have to make do until additional funds are made available.”

Maj. Gen. Joseph Tinkham, the state’s commissioner of Defense, Veterans and Emergency Management and the state adjutant general, is leading Maine’s homeland security effort. He said while he is confident additional federal funds will be provided to the states, few dollars have arrived to do the job.

“What we have is a plan for how to plan,” he said. “We have the broad goals and objectives but we need to do some detailed planning to prepare for the worst. And we have to prepare. People cannot be complacent.”

The plan was developed with the help of nearly 80 state, county and local government officials, businessmen and trade representatives who met for four days at the Bangor Air National Guard Base in early May.

Tinkham said the report will be available next week on his agency’s Web site at www.state.me.us/va/defense/dvs. In a cover letter to the report, he urges readers to comment on the plan by clicking on a link or by writing to him.

He said the plan the governor has approved closely follows the recommendations made at the conference. Tinkham said with King’s approval several specific target dates have been set to achieve the goals of the plan, but he also acknowledged some will not be met without additional resources.

“The nine major objectives have subobjectives and over 250 initiatives,” he said. “Every one needs to have somebody assigned to make sure it happens. We don’t have the capability to do that right now. We have to get that capability.”

Tinkham is in Washington, D.C., most of this week at a meeting with other state homeland security officials and with staff of federal Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge. He said other states face the same problems and are pushing to get the federal funds needed to get the job done.

“We need the planning money, and we need it right away,” Tinkham said. “[Federal officials] have got to cut whatever red tape there is that is impeding them in getting that money to the states.”

King agreed. He said the National Governors Association has urged swift release of funds already appropriated by Congress but not yet distributed to the states. He said funds are needed for planning, training and equipment in more areas than the potential bioterrorism threat.

“We just don’t have the resources and other states are in the same boat,” King said.

Tinkham said he could not estimate what it will cost to achieve all the goals spelled out in the report. He said the state has to complete threat assessments before planners can estimate what security steps are needed and what they might cost.

But, he said, it clearly will be expensive. For example, the third objective in the report calls for an improved communications network that will allow all of the agencies that may respond to an attack to communicate with each other.

“I think if something happened today we could make do, but that is not good enough,” he said. “And this is a national problem, and really even more than that. We could have a scenario where we need to communicate with agencies in New Hampshire or in New Brunswick. Washington has to take the lead on this.”

Tinkham put a $10 million “guesstimate” on what it might cost in Maine to make sure police, firemen, paramedics and other first responders are able to communicate among themselves. He said he couldn’t begin to put an estimate, however, on how much more it might cost to make sure federal agencies can talk to local groups in an emergency.

Tinkham said Maine has some capacity today to respond to a terror attack, based on its planning to handle a natural disaster. But he warned that a lack of equipment and training could make the quality of the response vary across the state.

In May, Portland-based Strategic Marketing Services released a survey of Mainers that indicated 60 percent of the respondents felt the state is either “very” or “somewhat” prepared to handle a terrorist attack.

Neither Tinkham nor King agrees with those who said the state is “very” prepared.