Senate OKs plan to consider tourists in security funding

Suzanne Struglinski

Thursday, July 24, 2003 | 11:01 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate late Wednesday agreed to a resolution directing the Homeland Security Department to take tourist populations into consideration when making grants.

The agreement took the place of a proposal by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., for a $20 million grant program for cities falling into that category.

"It works out better in the end," Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said. "Instead of a one-year program, this means that every time the Department of Homeland Security decides to divide up funds, tourist populations has to be one of the factors."

Under the resolution, tourist populations will be used when "determining resources needs and potential vulnerabilities for the purpose of allocating funds for discretionary and formula grants."

Hafen said the specific money Reid requested just was not available. Senators approved the resolution, proposed by Reid and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., Wednesday night but a separate bill calling for the change will be introduced at a later date. Under Senate rules, such a change could not be made through an appropriations bill. The Homeland Security spending bill is still under consideration on the Senate floor.

Sheriff Bill Young supported Reid's request for the addition of $20 million in funding for cities with large tourist populations. Young said this morning that he wanted to look at the new resolution before commenting on it.

Young said he liked the $20 million budget addition proposal because that it would have sent a specific amount of additional money to Las Vegas and other tourism-based cities.

Las Vegas often has more than 250,000 people staying in hotels, which is more than the populations of Savannah, Ga., or Tallahassee, Fla., Reid said.

"We have hundreds of thousands of people who visit Nevada and make our state home for a weekend," Reid said. "This puts added responsibility on our emergency responders and calls for additional resources."

The resolution states that monetary needs of emergency responders are directly related to the amount of people they are responsible to protect, but that the number of people in any city or state is often different from the Census Bureau estimates. It notes that "large groups of tourists regularly visit many American cities and states, but are not included in the resident population..."