The entire Nevada congressional delegation, including Republican U.S. Sen. Dean Heller and U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei, has requested that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) adjust how certain anti-terror designated funding amounts are determined for high-risk urban areas like Las Vegas, a major U.S. tourist area that suffered a mass shooting last October during a country music festival when a lone gunman killed 58 people from the window of a high-rise hotel.
Specifically, the lawmakers want the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Relative Risk Profile formula for the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) to consider additional data points in calculating and distributing funds, particularly the impact of tourism on localities, according to their bipartisan March 1 letter to DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
“It is our hope that you will take into consideration the unique challenges that Las Vegas faces as a premier tourist destination as you continue working to prevent terror attacks in the United States,” wrote the Nevada contingent, which also included Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval, a Republican.
U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, also signed the letter, as did Democratic U.S. Reps. Dina Titus, Jacky Rosen and Ruben Kihuen.
The UASI, a congressionally mandated fund aimed at keeping high-risk urban areas safe from terror attacks, uses a formula to rank the terror threat risk in each area, according to the letter. The Vulnerability and Consequence Component are two qualifying assets that get analyzed as part of each area’s Risk Profile. “Unfortunately, the Las Vegas Strip is ‘clustered’ and considered one asset,” by DHS, according to the lawmakers, “despite the fact that there are more than 35 hotels” along the strip with some properties being large enough to have 70,000 employees and visitors on site at once.
“Given that these heavily populated buildings are precisely the types of assets being targeted by terrorists around the world, we ask that you count these properties individually and not as a cluster, as each one is a viable target for an attack,” they wrote.
Southern Nevada counts almost a million tourists each week, according to Sen. Heller’s office, and in 2016 reported a total of 43 million tourists who generated $60 billion to the economy. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Statistical Area also hosts over 20,000 yearly conventions, his office said.
Such a tourism-heavy economy, the lawmakers also noted in their letter, should be accounted for in the Risk Profile, which they said currently fails to include the amount of special event assessment rating level events in its formula. “Including these types of special events, as well as accounting for their size, attendance, and appeal, would provide a more accurate scope of the risk,” the lawmakers wrote.
The Nevada congressional delegation has asked the DHS Secretary for a “timely response” addressing their concerns.