President Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget: $6 billion in state and local public safety programs

Deltek Analyst Luke Harris reports.

On Monday, President Obama released his proposed fiscal year 2013 budget, which outlines proposed budget figures for highly-relied-upon grant programs within state and local governments. President Obama’s budget provides $632.7 billion to aid state and local governments in 2013 – an increase of $20.2 billion from 2012. Grant outlays for justice programs are estimated at $6.9 billion in 2013. A total of $2.57 billion will be discretionary funding made available to state and local public safety agencies via the Office of Justice Programs (see below). In regards to homeland security, the budget provides the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with approximately $4 billion in discretionary funding (see below). In all, states and localities will have access to nearly $6 billion in public safety and homeland security grants for FY 2013.

Highlights:

• The budget provides $2.9 billion for state and local programs to equip, train, exercise, and hire first responders. To better target these funds, the budget proposes eliminating duplicative, stand-alone grant programs, and consolidating them into the National Preparedness Grant Program.
• To retain an acceptable level of fire and emergency response coverage in the current constrained budgetary environment, the budget anticipates $1 billion in immediate assistance for the retention, rehiring, and hiring of firefighters in 2012, as requested by the president in the American Jobs Act.
• The budget provides $6.1 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund.

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