While the overall budget for the Department of Homeland Security will swell again in fiscal year 2006, it looks like FIRE grants and the U.S. Fire Administration -- two vital programs for America’s fire departments -- will be cut once again.

The Senate passed its FY 2006 Homeland Security Appropriations bill in July, with an overall increase of $1.4 billion over the total enacted for 2005 to fund the department’s operations and activities, $30.8 billion. The House passed its DHS appropriations bill in May, with a total of $30.85 billion. Neither total includes a $2.5 billion advance appropriation for Project Bioshield.

A conference committee of members from the appropriations committees of both houses are reconciling the amounts proposed in the two bills and are expected to send their final conference report to the floor of both houses for approval in September, before the end of the fiscal year.

Under the Senate bill, the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program, commonly known as the FIRE Grants, received a sharp $100 million cut to $550 million. The new Staffing for Adequate Fire and Response Program, known as SAFER, received an increase, from $65 million in FY 05 to $115 million in FY 06. The House version offers a higher appropriation for the FIRE Grants ($575 million), but less for SAFER ($75 million).

The International Association of Fire Chiefs is asking its members to encourage the conference committee to approve the higher of those numbers: $575 million for FIRE Grants and $115 million for SAFER, for a total pot of direct grants to fire departments of $690. But even at those levels, the overall number will be less than the total of $715 million appropriated to these programs this year.

“It’s never going to be an easy task to get the full funding for both the FIRE Grants and SAFER, given the budget deficit, the war in Iraq and other economic challenges,” said Bill Webb, executive director of the Congressional Fire Services Institute. “We’re just going to have a big challenge to maintain or increase funding for these programs.”

Nevertheless, members of the fire service should be contacting their legislators during the recess in August, while legislators are in their home districts, Webb added. “Firefighters need to be out there, urging their legislators to support these programs to the fullest extent possible. We need to explain why the FIRE act is different than other Homeland Security grant programs, and we need to explain why the SAFER act is critical to bringing staffing up to recommended levels...

"While the federal government has pumped close to $3 billion into the FIRE Act program, the fire service still needs to convey to Congress and to the Administration that there’s still a lot of unmet need both in career and volunteer departments,” said Webb.

The U.S. Fire Administration budget, which has slipped down every year since DHS was established (from $67.3 million in 2002 to an estimated $55.9 in 2005), received a line-item appropriation of $52.6 million under a Senate provision. In the past, the USFA budget was lumped into the Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate under the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The IAFC supports the line-item provision in the Senate bill. While some say it will mean less flexibility in moving funding around to meet needs, it will make USFA funding easier to track.

The fire service benefits from many programs other than these under the DHS budget, such as the $15 million proposed to support interoperable communications under the Science and Technology Directorate, $34 million for the National Disaster Medical System and $30 million proposed for Urban Search and Rescue Teams. All told, according to U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), fire departments are getting about $4 billion a year from federal coffers.

“We’ve come a long way,” said Weldon. “We’ve just got to continue the battle to continue to increase the funding levels. We’ve given out – out of almost 32,000 fire departments – almost 20,000 have gotten [FIRE] Grants so far. Some have gotten two grants and some have gotten three grants. We’re making progress, but there’s room to do more.”

Weldon suggested that fire departments establish a new officer dedicated to fighting political fires. ”Every fire chief in America, every fire department ought to appoint a political officer, and that political officer’s responsibility ought to be to establish a proactive relationship with our elected officials. We have a safety officer in the fire department; we have a desk officer; we need a political officer. And that political officer doesn’t mean a Republican or a Democrat. It means they have to get the support of all elected officials to work for the support of the first responder.”
  
If all 32,000 fire departments had a political officer, Weldon said, “that’s 32,000 people across the country that would be promoting fire and EMS issues at the local level, state and federal level. I would challenge every fire department, every rescue service in the country to have at least one political officer, whose job it is to tell the story of the fire service, get the elected officials to involve themselves with the fire service, to establish an agenda of the priorities and to get to know the staffers of the members of Congress who work fire and EMS issues.”