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RACKED WITH INSECURITY
Where’s the bacon?
BY SETH GITELL

During Governor Mitt Romney’s campaign against former state treasurer Shannon O’Brien, he boasted that he could bring Massachusetts more homeland-security funding. " The federal dollars are there, and we need to go after those dollars and get a larger stake in that pie, such that we can have a homeland-security effort which can really secure our citizens, " Romney told the Patriot Ledger on October 16. " That is something I have experience doing. "

A little more than four months into his governorship, how’s Romney doing? Not very well. Massachusetts did receive $11.7 million in funding from the Department of Homeland Security, but that figure came from a straight population formula. The Commonwealth then missed out on a share of another $100 million distributed as part of the Homeland Security Department’s Urban Area Security Initiative. That money went to Washington, DC, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, and Seattle. The inclusion of Seattle — at the expense of Boston — is particularly humiliating for Romney, given that Washington governor Gary Locke delivered the Democratic response to President Bush’s State of the Union address this year. So much for Romney’s Republican friends in high places.

The idea that Romney could work miracles in winning federal funds for Massachusetts always did seem a little hard to swallow, considering that the Bay State already has two powerhouse US senators, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. Still, Romney sold himself on his ability to deliver for the state. Unless the federal government comes through with a new round of homeland-security funding — as requested in writing by Romney, Kennedy, and Boston mayor Tom Menino on April 9 — our Republican governor will have failed to fulfill yet another promise.

Issue Date: April 25 - May 1, 2003
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