Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff last week appeared before a Senate committee to discuss the future of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and nearly every senator asked him about the lack of local preparedness grants. Chairman Susan Collins observed that Mr. Chertoff had achieved the unlikely feat with current grant decisions of irritating both urban New York and rural Maine.

A primary reason for creating the Department of Homeland Security was to coordinate preparedness funds for all types of emergencies. When states, whether those with large cities or those made up of small towns, face cuts of 40 or 50 percent for emergency programs, they lose the ability to plan and they lose the opportunity to meet the standards federal officials themselves have said are necessary.

Maine, for instance, has used its added funding for upgrades in communications, including towers and radio repeaters and laptops in police and fire vehicles. It has upgraded the number of hazardous materials teams and created new bomb teams in its cities. Maine could not have afforded these programs on its own and it would have trouble maintaining them without federal support.

These changes paid off, for instance, however, when the mobile command vehicles purchased with homeland-security funding were used at scenes of natural disasters, such as the recent floods in Southern Maine. Yet Homeland Security funding has been cut in Maine from a high of $22.4 million in 2004 to $7.8 million this year.

Urban areas are unhappy with the funds they received, arguing that they should be entirely risk-based. Places such as New York and Washington certainly do face greater risks from terrorists, but rural states also face some threat of terrorism – whether terrorists are training or passing through a rural state, as happened in 9/11, or

the rural areas are required to serve as safe places in the result of an attack on a nearby city.

The recent arrests in Toronto additionally suggest that states along the northern border should receive the resources they need to handle possible emergencies.

DHS administers grants on what it calls an all-hazards response, including natural disasters but also special budget lines for its Urban Areas Security Initiative and the Metropolitan Medical Response System. These and other funding sources result in nearly half of the total grants going to just five cities.

The problem is less likely to be one of distribution and more likely to be of the total amount of money available, a level the Bush administration is expected to lower again next year.

Without adequate funding, Maine risks the maintenance to its new safety services and its training. It risks building a safety system that cannot meet the challenges that, sometime, will confront the state. It’s worth noting the Senate Homeland Security Committee was reviewing FEMA in part because these aspects of the agency were so badly lacking.

Unless funding for local emergency agencies grows, Congress can be guaranteed that it will hold similar hearings in the future.