Fighting the war against terrorism is mostly seen as a national
concern. But with its nuclear power plants, airports, a port on
the Great Lakes and a border crossing 100 miles away, Chris Iven
thought the people in Central New York also had significant local
concerns. So, pulling county-by-county data from TRAC's Special
Report on Department of Homeland Security (DHS), available on
TRAC's public site, Iven took a careful look at what the war on
terrorism meant to the region. One finding: paying the salaries
of the 227 full-time DHS employees in the Syracuse-area counties
cost $7.7 million a year, a total that worked out to about $10.49
per resident. In the period since August 25, 2003 when TRAC put
up the special report, a number of other papers including the
Washington Post, the Toledo Blade, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette also have published articles citing
TRAC's online DHS staffing report
