SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KCBS)  -- Cities in the Bay Area, like other large metropolitan areas like New York and Washington D.C., have been awarded less funding from the Dept. of Homeland Security than in years past, while funding for rural areas has increased. The new allocations prompted an outcry from city leaders and members of Congress.

Democratic Congressman Tom Lantos said he would press Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Monday about his department's spending priorities.

"The notion that some area in Nebraska or Alaska or Wyoming is a greater risk than San Francisco, New York, or Washington, is just preposterous," Lantos told KCBS reporter Janice Wright.

Chertoff has defended the distribution by saying that high risk areas initially received much more funding immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks so that long term programs could be put in place. That same level of funding, Chertoff said, isn't needed every year, and areas of the country that house vital energy resources also require security improvements.

But Lantos did not mince words.

"I don't think there is a rational explanation. This is the same department which handled the hurricanes so brilliantly," Lantos said. "Apparently they haven't learned."

The Congressman even went so far as to call for Chertoff's removal, pointing to a study by the Rand Corporation that finds the Bay Area very vulnerable to a terrorist attack.

"On the basis of that," Lantos said, referring to the study, "we should be getting considerably more than what Homeland Security is proposing to give our area."

(jro)