MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Alabama’s annual share of federal funding through the Homeland Security Grant Program is in question this year, officials with the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency recently shared.
Nevertheless, members of the agency’s Homeland Security Task Force are moving forward with several funding priorities for 2025 should funds ultimately become available.
“The ever-elusive 2025 money that we don’t know if it’s coming – we don’t know when it’s coming – that notice of funding has not been released by FEMA just yet,” said Wendy Taylor, ALEA Programs Office Director, in a recent meeting She manages more than 15 grant programs for the agency.
The grant program sees Alabama receive, on average, between $3 million and $4 million every year, Taylor said. The funds are distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which releases funding notices on an annual basis, as well as funding priorities the money can be used on as outlined by the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security.
However, funding from FEMA to states across the nation has been in question in recent months after President Donald Trump, through the Office of Management and Budget, ordered a pause on the disbursement of federal grants and loans in January. Trump also established a FEMA Review Council to potentially overhaul the federal agency, and has previously suggested downsizing FEMA or abolishing it completely.
In 2024, ALEA received around $4 million through the grant program, at least 80% of which is mandated to be distributed to local agencies. Around $647,000 of the $4 million was awarded to the Alabama Mutual Aid System, a coalition of 52 emergency response teams, $450,000 was used to construct a new communications tower in DeKalb County, and $377,000 was used to fund bomb squads for local law enforcement agencies.
Despite the uncertainty, Taylor said the agency had decided to move forward as normal in accepting requests for proposals from various entities across the state hoping for a share of the federal grant money, and that demand remained strong.
“So what we have done is, in anticipation of (federal grant funding disbursements) being quick, we’ve already opened it up for the locals to apply,” she said. “We gave them from roughly April 1 to May 15 to submit those applications, and we had well over $11 million worth of applications that have been submitted.”
Regarding homeland security needs ALEA may focus on for its 2025 share of federal grant funding should they ultimately be disbursed, a number of topics were discussed. Among the most frequent, ALEA officials said, were school shooting threats, with more than 60 cases documented this year. Not included in the 60-plus documented cases were also a number of copy-cat school threats last September in the wake of the Apalachee High School shooting in Winder, Georgia that left four dead and seven injured.
Another threat Alabama faced in the past year was from an online violent network of predators known as the 764 group, founded in Texas but with members spanning the globe. The group typically targets minors across the United States through online platforms and, after gaining a minors trust, attempt to coerce them into producing pornography, engaging in self harm or harming pets. The FBI currently has more than 250 active investigations into cases with ties to the organization, with some victims as young as nine.
According to information presented during the meeting, multiple cases of the 764 group and its subgroups targeting victims in Alabama had been confirmed, though specifics could not be detailed.
Hal Taylor, who leads ALEA as its secretary, said his agency was already making progress in being better equipped to respond to school shooting incidents with the passage of the School Security Act last year, which among other things, established a new school mapping program to digitally map all schools, handled by ALEA. He told Alabama Daily News that solicitations for services to add in the mapping had already been sent out, and selections would be made in a matter of weeks.
“The thought was, since multiple first responders, whether its city, county, state police, EMS, whatever first responders show up first, we want to have a map in place of the school so they can see it,” Taylor told ADN.