When the U.S. Department of Homeland Security handed out $580 million in anti-terrorism grants in January for the second year in a row, Orlando didn’t get a dollar because the threat of terror there was judged to be too low, reports the Orlando Sentinel.
U.S. Rep. John Mica is calling for a congressional investigation into Homeland Security’s evaluation process, and Florida Sens. Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson urged the agency to revisit its assessment of Central Florida.Mica, a Winter Park Republican, decried the agency’s “total miscalculation” of Orlando’s terrorism risk as “one of the worst security miscalculations since 9-11.”
Sunday’s mass murder at an Orlando nightclub came six months after the city was denied grants through the Urban Area Security Initiative, which offers federal funding for local efforts to predict, respond to and recover from acts of terrorism. An appeal was denied. New York got $178 million, Los Angeles and Chicago about $68 million each, Miami and Fort Lauderdale $5.4 million combined, and Tampa nearly $3 million. Orlando was awarded $1 million in grant funding in 2014 but nothing since.