After spending cut, Chertoff no longer apple of N.Y.’s eye

After spending cut, Chertoff no longer apple of N.Y.’s eye
City has no monuments or icons, he says.

Published Saturday, June 3, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) - When Michael Chertoff was chosen to lead the nation’s Department of Homeland Security, New Yorkers hailed him as a champion for their tense city. Then he cut New York’s anti-terrorism funding nearly in half.

Now, Chertoff is about as popular among New Yorkers as a slow-walking tourist in a Boston Red Sox cap.

Chertoff’s agency announced Wednesday that New York’s anti-terror dollars would be reduced by 40 percent, or about $83 million, from the $207 million it received in 2005. New Yorkers howled that it was the third time in less than a year that his department had whacked New York.

"He assured us before we supported him that he would fully support New York. Now that seems to have gone completely down the drain," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. "I want to meet with him to hear his explanation, but this sure looks like betrayal to me."

Since Sept. 11, 2001, New York officials have charged the government spreads far too much security grant money to rural places at low risk. They felt they had scored a victory in that fight in early 2005 when President George W. Bush nominated Chertoff, a New Jersey native, to lead the homeland security department.

But then Chertoff defended the decision to cut New York’s terror allotment, arguing that the city has zero national monuments or icons and only four major financial institutions.

New York lawmakers were flabbergasted. "He has been blinded by pride here, and he’s now defending incompetency," said Rep. Joseph Crowley, a Democrat from Queens. "When he got the job, we thought, ‘Here’s a guy from the region, and he’s gonna understand what we face.’ Quite frankly it’s the exact opposite. It’s a slap in the face."

Chertoff said the criticism wouldn’t help New York get any more money.

"Attacking the secretary personally or threatening the secretary is not a way to drive funding decisions," Chertoff said Thursday during an appearance at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Chertoff was born in New Jersey and hired by then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani in the 1980s as a federal prosecutor. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he led the Department of Justice effort to track down terror suspects.

With that kind of background, New Yorkers were sure Chertoff would be in their corner.

What a difference a year makes.

The first blow came in July, shortly after the bombing of the London train system.

Chertoff said urban U.S. subway systems would be largely on their own when it came to security upgrades because the government was more concerned about protecting airliners.

In October, Chertoff’s department got into a public feud with New York City officials over a tip that terrorists might try to set off bombs in the city’s subway system using baby strollers.

The New York Police Department took the tip seriously, and its officers flooded into the tunnels.

At the same time, homeland security officials were publicly casting doubt on the credibility of the information.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg suggested yesterday that lingering ill will from that episode might have played a role in the acrimony over the funding cut. "Whether this is a little bit of getting even with us for embarrassing them, I don’t know," Bloomberg said yesterday on his weekly radio program on WABC.

The mayor said he spoke Thursday night with Chertoff and "told him, for sure, I disagreed." He expressed a desire to maintain a working relationship with the department and said he would look into whether the city properly filed its application for the money.

"Calling Chertoff names isn’t probably the greatest idea to get him to be cooperative a year from now," Bloomberg said.