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a local issue, and it really is. The information sharing for us is critical at all levels.

We still need to work at tearing down some of these jurisdictional boundaries, just in terms of you know, not our responsibilities, but in terms of information sharing. One of the areas that I would like to see improved on is the security clearance process, which is a very cumbersome process to go through, to be able to get that clearance to receive a higher level of confidential information. I understand the importance of the confidentiality of this information; however, I think for the heads of agencies, like myself and chiefs of police, there could be a more streamlined process so that we have so that our counterparts at the various levels; for instance, Jeff Burke and Dave Mitchell with the FBI, Dan Jones with the local ATF office, John Bergland of the Secret Service, people that I interact with frequently, so that they can actually share that information with me, with the understanding that it is sensitive and not everybody needs to know it, but I think the head of the agency does, especially with my countywide jurisdiction. So I would like to see some improvements there.

The other area of concern for me is we do not really seem to have an infrastructure in place with which to share information and we are relying on faxes, we are relying on phone calls. The best example I can give that we have here in the county in terms of information sharing is with the HIDTA organization, the high intensity drug trafficking area, where we do have an infrastructure utilizing the computer, that many agencies, different jurisdictions, different levels of jurisdiction have access to. Of course it is not open to everybody, you need certain clearance and passwords to get into certain information. However, that infrastructure that was set up for the information-and that is why it was set up the way it was, for information sharing at different levels because you have Federal involvement, you have State involvement and you have local involvement and so there is a central point that people can go to, to obtain information as well as disseminate information.

So, like I said, having jurisdiction for the entire county, I think the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office would be the most reasonable place to start in terms of being the central focal point for receiving the information from the various levels. And it would be my responsibility to disseminate that amongst the municipal agencies within the County of Milwaukee.

That is really all I have to add at this point. Thank you.

Mr. HORN. Well, thank you. That is very helpful for us and you have made some good points there. And other sheriffs such as you and other responders certainly agree with what you are saying. We will get to that in a few minutes.

Right now, I would like to have another from the State of Wisconsin here. Why do we not have the Commander Mark R. Devries, the Marine Safety Office in Milwaukee. So if we could get that view on emergency response, it would be helpful. Mr. Devries.

Mr. DEVRIES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If I understand, would you like us, the Coast Guard, to present our oral statement at this point? If so, my counterpart, Captain Hartley, will be delivering that.

Mr. HORN. Go ahead. I just want to see the locals and then go right to the Federal.

Captain HARTLEY. Mr. Chairman, my name is Scott Hartley and I am here to represent the National Strike Force, which is also an entity in the Coast Guard, but I was going to provide a national perspective on that.

Mr. HORN. Sure. I just wanted the local points here, because some of our colleagues might have to go to other things, so we would like to get the view locally and then get some questions and then get to various Federal.

STATEMENT OF MARK DEVRIES, COMMANDER, MARINE

SAFETY OFFICE, MILWAUKEE, WI

Mr. DEVRIES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I will go ahead and try to share a local perspective.

As the Commanding Officer of the Marine Safety Office here in Milwaukee, I have the responsibility for eastern Wisconsin, stretching up through Green Bay and above Washington Island and back south to the Illinois border. In my capacity as the commanding officer, I am also the Federal on-scene coordinator under the National Contingency Plan for the response to oil and hazardous material incidents.

We feel that the approach to weapons of mass destruction events nearly always will include an incident which will be either a chemical or hazardous material type response. And under the National Contingency Plan, I will be responsible for working with my partners in the State and local government as well as the other Federal agencies as a coordinator in forming a response to an incident such as that.

Under the National Contingency Plan, we operate in the incident command system with a unified command. Wisconsin brings an extra added dimension, which I am quite pleased to say I think works really well, and that is the fact that Wisconsin is a home rule State. The result of that is that I believe in the different areas that I have been stationed throughout the Nation, I find here in Wisconsin that there is responsibility and authority placed at the local level for government services that results in an outstanding participation, wonderful relationships and great interest in planning and actually preparing and executing responses. As such, we have wonderful participation in our area committee, which is responsible for the area plan which is the framework which we respond to these incidents under. The relationships that we have built since we brought the added security dimension to our response network has only grown further with our relationship with the FBI, the Sheriff's Office in the form of the emergency management side of the Sheriff's Office.

The primary fact that what we have here is a coordination type role in the State locally, we work the contingency plans, we exercise them; in 2000, we held a weapons of mass destruction exercise which involved the participation for planning and actually executing the exercise with the county emergency management. We participated in that exercise, we had the FBI and the whole response

We just recently had a triennial exercise under the National Contingency Plan which requires us to exercise our ability to respond under the area plan. And interestingly enough, including the Y2K events, all of our events have been operated and set up out of the emergency operations center of the county. That in itself represents I think a strong relationship between the response-the local response community.

I will stop at that point and be glad to take any questions.

Mr. HORN. Thank you. We will now have one more local and in this group-and this is the first time we have tried these sorts of things, to try to get groups and then move to the next one. And let me ask about the Administrator for Wisconsin Emergency Management, get that on the table, Edward Gleason.

STATEMENT OF EDWARD GLEASON, ADMINISTRATOR, WISCONSIN EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AND HOMELAND SECURITY ADVISOR TO GOVERNOR

Mr. GLEASON. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of this committee. I appreciate the opportunity to testify this morning. My name is Ed Gleason, I serve as the Administrator of Wisconsin Emergency Management, as Homeland Security Advisor to Governor Scott McCallum and also as Co-Chair of the Governor's Task Force on Terrorism Preparedness.

Here in Wisconsin, we did not wake up on September 12 and decide that we needed to do something. We have been working to raise our preparedness levels for the past 5 years. We have two cities in Wisconsin, Milwaukee and Madison, among the 120 cities nationwide that have received Federal assistance to prepare for terrorism as a result of the passage of the Nunn-Lugar Act.

This assistance has helped these two metropolitan areas considerably; however, it left the rest of the State less than prepared. Something else was needed to reach our cities and counties that lie outside the major urban areas. In 2000, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Emergency Management Agency broadened the program and released equipment and planning grants to include these areas.

Counties that applied for the funding were required to conduct threat and vulnerability assessments of their jurisdictions, determine what their local capabilities are to meet these threats and to identify future equipment needs.

Using these assessments, last October, Wisconsin became the tenth State in the Nation to complete the Statewide strategic plan for domestic preparedness. This freed up $3.8 million of fiscal year 1999, 2000 and 2001 funding.

Our Statewide assessment detailed a need for over $16 million though, for essential equipment, so you can see that there clearly is not enough money at this time. The fact that these funds have come as 100 percent funding and no match is required has helped our communities considerably. We do believe at a time when we are struggling to build capacity, it is extremely helpful not to be challenged by identifying a requisite match.

A significant problem with these funds, however, was the lack of flexibility in spending the allocated dollars. The Office of Justice Programs has an Authorized Equipment List that is somewhat lim

ited. And when you want to deviate from this list, it requires a detailed justification that consumes considerable time.

It has been a demanding grant to administer, as evidenced by how long it has taken to get the dollars down to the streets. In Wisconsin, we have expended about 50 percent of those funds, 95 percent of those are allocated to local communities. However, our spending rate, I would dare venture is probably ahead of the rest of the Nation. Flexibility should be the key in designing future grant programs.

We have just on Friday, submitted our 2002 grant. The Justice Department has expanded the eligible areas under this grant program. We will receive nearly $6 million for program and exercise needs. This will help considerably in our preparedness efforts, but still our needs are greater than the funds available. We believe that the 2003 First Responder Initiative dollars proposed by President Bush will further help our preparedness efforts.

The First Responder Initiative should help immeasurably in raising our preparedness levels. However, probably more appropriately the name for this initiative should be emergency responder initiative vice first responder, to broaden the eligibility for those who could receive these funds. By most definitions, first responders are law enforcement, fire service and EMS, emergency medical services, personnel who are often the first to respond and enter harm's way. They do need and deserve, rightly deserve, our highest effort to get them this protection. Yet, there are a cadre of disciplines who may also be thrust in harm's way and we need to be able to provide them with the appropriate equipment and the flexibility to do so. These response disciplines could be public health professionals, public works personnel and emergency management personnel. All may need consideration for this funding and I suggest you leave it to the Governors to designate who should be eligible for these funds.

Two weeks ago, I was present to hear Governor Ridge's remarks to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Madison. The mayors asked if he would provide block grants directly to the cities to help them in their preparedness efforts. I strongly support his response, that the grants should not be block grants to municipalities, rather they should be provided to the States through the Governors. I believe that we need to do this if we hope to build a Statewide system that can complement our national system. I believe block grants tend to create islands of response capabilities, that may not add to the system as a whole.

It will also be tough in these difficult financial times for the State and local governments to provide a hard match to these 2003 funds. We would like to see no match at all or a recognition for the efforts as the appropriate match for these funds.

Last October, FEMA led a team of Federal agencies to Wisconsin to jointly assess with us our terrorism preparedness response capability in 18 critical areas. We arrived at more than 40 action items that when implemented will improve Wisconsin's preparedness in response capabilities.

A few examples of these action items include the following: Promoting incident command systems to manage disaster response;

of communications; further strengthening lab capabilities; and seeking the designation of a full time civil support team comprised of 22 National Guard soldiers trained and equipped to face chemical, biological and radiological threats. There are 32 States in the Nation with these teams and we strongly feel that this capability should reside also in Wisconsin.

I would like to conclude with a brief comment on the proposed Department of Homeland Security. Governor McCallum and I support the President's proposal. We believe it is a sound concept to tackle the challenges our Nation faces. I offer this perspective as a State director of emergency management and as a retired Coast Guard officer.

I appreciate the opportunity provided today. As a Nation, we have much work to do and the States appreciate the leadership of the President and Congress in providing funding to help us get there.

I ask that you continue to be flexible in the administration of these funds as we collectively work to make our Nation better prepared.

Thank you.

Mr. HORN. Thank you. We appreciate those ideas.

And now we will move to the Federal portion of the law enforcement issues as we have had at the local and State level. We will have Jeffrey J. Berkin, the Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Milwaukee Division, Federal Bureau of Investigation.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gleason follows:]

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