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.”

Investigative Reporting Blog on Bennie Thompson, Hinds Homeland Security funds

The Center for Investigative Reporting says the press missed a "politically intriguing" story about Hinds County, Homeland Security funds, and Congressman Bennie Thompson.

The Center for Investigative Reporting has offered up numerous stories by now of communities running into trouble with federal grants awarded to them by Washington for anti-terrorism and preparedness purposes. But one of the most politically intriguing so far surfaced in early October.

That’s when the Department of Homeland Security told local authorities in Hinds County, Miss., that they needed to return public-safety equipment purchased with the funds that went unused. The list of questioned gear apparently accumulating dust included tanks for oxygen masks, four-wheelers, search-and-rescue tools and even “heavy-duty trucks,” according to one local news account.

What did that news account neglect to mention? Hinds County is represented by Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson, chair of the powerful House Homeland Security Committee. Thompson doesn’t just back the $33 billion Congress has handed out in readiness grants to states and local communities since 2002. He’s chided FEMA for trying to implement a policy that would have required grantees to use their own money for maintaining equipment they’d already bought.