Friday, October 30, 2015

Dept. of Homeland Security & Emergency Management Budget Review


2015 Cook County Budget Department Review: Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management
October 29, 2015
 
On Oct. 29th, the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management met with the Finance Committee to discuss its budget. Commissioners Boykin, Tobolski, Morrison, Arroyo, Suffredin, Steele, and Schneider were present. All but Commissioner Schneider asked questions. All welcomed the new Director, Ernest Brown, who has only been on the job for 2 weeks. All stated that they looked forward to working with him in the future. To answer many of his questions, Mr. Brown deferred to his Chief of Staff and his Finance Director.  The purpose of this department is to respond to both natural and man-made disasters.
 
Three STAR goals were stated for this department in the budget book. They include more training courses for first responders, sharing notifications for federal grants with other county departments, and improving the arrival time for emergency personnel. Commissioner Suffredin was the only one to quote STAR goals in his questions, although Commissioner Steele did refer to including more types of personnel in the training courses. Commissioner Steele asked if funeral directors, religious leaders, and hospital workers could be included with the other first responders (police and fire fighters, for example) because they, too, should be trained in keeping communities calm and cared for in an emergency. Mr. Brown seemed to agree that including the community leaders in training was a good idea. Comm. Steele also asked if Mr. Brown had met with Dr. King, the director of the Illinois Medical District, since she works with bio-tech issues and wants to be part of this department’s work. Mr. Brown agreed to meet with her.
     
Commissioner Suffredin spent a good deal of time asking about specific federal grants, since most of this department’s budget is from such grants. He asked about the STAR goal of sharing grants. The Finance Director said that he would share notification for the application for such grants with other CC Departments such as the jail, forest preserves, and the state’s attorneys’ office. He also asked about the STAR goal of improving deployment times for emergency personnel. The budget showed a target last year of 14 minutes, yet the current goal was 60 minutes. The director said that he wanted the target to be “realistic” and that last year’s target was not.
 
Commissioner Tobolski praised the former Director, Michael Masters, for his work in uniting the 134 communities of Cook County in writing preparedness plans for evacuations and emergency planning. He said that without such plans, emergency aid does not come through from the federal government. He asked if we were currently prepared enough for such emergencies.  Mr. Brown assured him that we were and said he appreciated the need for all communities to work together on this.
 
A good deal of time was spent discussing what this department CANNOT do. Grant money from the federal government comes with some very specific stipulations, said the director. So when Commissioner Boykin asked if some money could be spent combating “narco-terrorism” (pipeline of hard drugs coming right into Chicago), the director said that he shares the concern over this problem, but his department cannot use grant money for it. The director did note that he works with the Sheriff’s department on communications and technical projects. Commissioner Suffredin also asked if some money could be used to combat the recent heroin epidemic (especially the overdosing on “bad” heroin). Again the director said that grant money could not be used for this purpose.
 
There was some discussion of the high salaries of some of the employees in this department, especially those who were paid with grant money. The director said that some personnel are highly technical computer experts who are trained to combat cyberterrorism, a real threat. He said that he was competing with the private sector for some of these experts.
 
Director Brown thanked the committee for the opportunity to explain his department’s budget and promised to be much more prepared next year, when he had more than 2 weeks on the job.

Submitted by Jan Goldberg

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