On April 28th, the full Illinois Terrorism Task Force (ITTF) met and reviewed the Federal FFY2021 State Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP) and the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) grants. These grants focus on homeland security issues such as countering domestic extremism, cybersecurity, protecting soft targets and crowded places, emergent threats, planning and mutual aid.
The SHSGP grant to Illinois was $14,427,260. The UASI grant (limited to the City of Chicago and Cook County) was $63 million. The State retained $6,700,000 in UASI funds to be spent in Cook County. The final budget approved by ITTF resulted in ILEAS receiving the following:
- Communications $833,510
- Mutual Aid $418,850
- Planning $1,400,260
- Special Teams $1,950,620
- Training $890,360
- IMERT Support* $79,776
- Total $5,573,376
The ITTF approval is now forwarded to the Governor's Homeland Security Advisor - Alicia Tate-Nadeau - for her approval and then submission to the FEMA for final approval. Once approved, this budget starts on July 1, 2022 and runs through June 30, 2023. Because Illinois received a reduced amount of funding from FEMA in FFY2021, ILEAS' portion did decrease about $400,000 from the FFY2020 grant. However, ILEAS is currently applying for approximately $2,200,000 in State SFY2022 Preparedness and Response (PAR) grant funds. At this time, there is $5,000,000 in PAR funds budgeted to start being available on July 1st.
*ILEAS supports the Illinois Medical Emergency Response Team (IMERT) by employing one staff member focused solely on IMERT.