Rural parts of Virginia won the lion’s share of a new round of anti-terrorism grants announced Thursday, while Northern Virginia received a small fraction.
Of the $260,553 distributed under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention Program, Arlington County will receive $4,963 and Fairfax County will see $4,940. Stafford County gets $4,908.
Meanwhile, the rural Albemarle County near Charlottesville and Wythe County near the North Carolina border won $5,000.
The money, administered by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, will pay for personal protective equipment — items such as gas masks and tactical vests — said Eileen Guertler, spokeswoman for the department.
Northern Virginia officials have long complained that they don’t receive adequate federal dollars to be prepared for a large-scale terrorist attack, and the Department of Homeland Security has been criticized for allocating money to rural areas at the expense of more vulnerable urban ones.
But Guertler said the new round of grants was capped at $5,000 for each jurisdiction and gave priority to towns, after awards in previous years pumped millions of dollars into Northern Virginia. She said her department hasn’t received any complaints from local governments this time.
“A huge amount of money went to them in previous grants,” she said.
Officials in local county governments didn’t return calls Thursday.
Under the same grant program in 2004, Fairfax County was awarded $1.1 millionfor equipment, Arlington County $383,000 and Manassas $134,000. The following year, Alexandria received $300,000, Fairfax City received $51,000, Falls Church took in $24,000 and Manassas Park received $25,000, according to data from the state Department of Criminal Justice Services.
