Bennie Thompson: Performance Measures to Secure Homeland Security Money...like $22 million for Tougaloo

So President Barack Obama signed a law to reduce waste and increase accountability in Homeland Security funds. Bennie Thompson said about the new law:

“Without reliable performance measures, we risk allotting scarce homeland security grant dollars to activities that do not boost our nation’s preparedness,” said Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

We agree. Afterall, if we waste Homeland Security money, we won't have any to spend on those critical needs to keep our country safe and "boost our nation's preparedness." Things like...a $23 million earmark for Tougaloo for a program that apparently didn't exist.

In an earmark request for 2010 appropriations, Thompson’s Web site indicates that he is seeking $23 million for the “National Institute for Education and Training” at Tougaloo College for “an Operational Test and Evaluation Activity (OTEA) in Vicksburg, Mississippi…”

The money would be “an addition to existing programs” at the institutions, [Thompson's Chief of Staff Lanier] Avant said. Tougaloo “has one of the most renowned engineering programs of all the [historically black colleges and universities] in the country. … It’s not like Tougaloo is some kind of new kid on the block,” he said.

But Tougaloo does not offer an engineering major. The school’s course catalog indicates that there is not a single engineering class being taught at Tougaloo this semester. The school does have a joint program with the Georgia Institute of Technology that allows students to transfer there to get their engineering degree after finishing their liberal arts coursework at Tougaloo.

George Armstrong, a chemistry professor who serves as the interim director of Tougaloo’s National Institute for Education and Training in Transportation Security, said he had heard about the earmark but had no details about it.

“That is something just coming out,” Armstrong said. “I wouldn’t have known about it except I just happened to be in a meeting” where the project was mentioned, he said last week. “It hasn’t been fully defined … [though] I know our name is associated with that.”