Columnist Jeff German: Why we shouldn’t feel safer

Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2004 | 11:02 a.m.

We're told that al-Qaida is gearing up to attack this country again, yet Nevada's homeland security efforts remain a work in progress at best.

After Jerry Bussell, the state's first homeland security chief, got caught in a power play and resigned two months ago, Gov. Kenny Guinn promised big changes in the fight against terrorism.

The fight was going to go to the next level and become more focused on terrorism and less focused on the politics of terrorism.

But during this time of great national peril, we have yet to see any changes. There is still no sense of direction and purpose to the state's efforts.

The Nevada Homeland Security Commission, created by the Legislature last year to coordinate the overall anti-terrorism campaign, hasn't met since May 24. No meeting is set in the near future. And Guinn has yet to fulfill his promise of paring down the unmanageable 23-member body.

Guinn also has yet to split up the jobs of homeland security adviser and Homeland Security Commission chairman. Just as Bussell did, state Public Safety Director George Togliatti is handling both jobs, only on an acting basis.

Togliatti says the state is "rolling right along" with plans to revamp its anti-terrorism strategy, but he admits he's not sure when we'll see it in place. The governor's top aides say they aren't sure, either, though they scheduled a meeting with Togliatti for this afternoon.

All of this concerns Bussell, who was hoping the state would be well on its way by now to making the changes Guinn promised two months ago.

"We're in a very precarious position right now with indications that al-Qaida might do something to affect the political will of this country," says Bussell, who just took a job as deputy director of UNLV's Institute for Security Studies. "We need to be doubly vigilant."

That vigilance is even more important when you consider that Las Vegas has been the subject of much chatter in terrorism intelligence circles.

The Homeland Security Commission was set up to advise local first-responders and develop an equitable funding formula to distribute the tens of millions of federal anti-terrorism dollars coming into the state.

Bussell accomplished the latter task by creating a funding mechanism that is sending 70 percent of the federal money to Southern Nevada, the home of the biggest threat.

But siding with the South, as he should have, cost Bussell his job. Jealous Northerners, rankled by the disparity in funding, worked to undercut him with the governor and force his early retirement at the end of May.

The experience left the governor determined to take politics out of the process.

The plan is for the homeland security adviser to no longer serve on the Homeland Security Commission, but rather to head a new beefed-up division within the Public Safety Department.

This will keep state terrorism officials out of the federal funding battles between local law enforcement agencies and allow them to concentrate on providing homeland security expertise and technical support to those agencies.

It sounds great on paper, but it will require the hiring of homeland security analysts. And Guinn so far hasn't figured out where he's going to get the money to pay for them.

Then again the governor hasn't figured out the rest of the new homeland security game plan, either.

The time to do it would be before al-Qaida strikes again.