Spencer Collier

Director, Alabama Department of Homeland Security

Spencer Collier was appointed on December 23, 2010, by Governor Robert Bentley to serve as Alabama’s third Director of Homeland Security. Biography.
 

Recently, the Forum had the opportunity to interview Director Collier.

Forum:  What are the particular challenges facing the state of Alabama in the area of homeland security?

Director Collier:  I think the challenges facing Alabama are probably the challenges that you will hear in the other 49 states.  The number one challenge is the budget constraints on the federal, state, and local levels of government.  We all have to deal with the fiscal reality of shrinking budgets for homeland security and public safety but the threats remain constant if not growing.  Our first priority is to sustain the capabilities that we have built since 9/11 and that is tough to do in the current budget environment.

Forum: Alabama was the first to legislatively establish a cabinet-level office of homeland security after the events of September 11, 2001. How has the existence of this office helped the state in relation to issues of preparedness, response, and recovery?

Director Collier:  We were the first state to establish a cabinet-level homeland security office, and we are proud of that.  What this office has done is provide strategic guidance and planning to homeland security efforts in Alabama, and I feel it has increased our overall preparedness in Alabama.  We are not first responders of course and neither do we have operational assets, but we have developed the comprehensive Alabama homeland security strategy to address the five mission areas detailed in Presidential Policy Directive 8 of prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery.   We have worked to coordinate with our federal, state, local and private sector partners to assess needs and vulnerabilities to determine gaps and fill those gaps as the resources are available.   I think it is safe t say that was not being done at this level prior to September 11, 2001.

Forum: It is often said that any incident is local for the first 24-48 hours, or maybe longer, until the federal assistance begins to arrive. With that caveat in mind, how would you rate the state of Alabama today in its overall abilities to respond to an incident/event that impacted the state?

Director Collier:  I would rate our overall ability to respond as satisfactory (or high).  Fortunately or unfortunately, we have had a lot of real world incidents in Alabama recently. Hurricane Ivan in 2004, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the April 2011 tornadoes are the ones that are probably more nationally known, but we have had others as well.  In 2003 when the federal homeland security funding was high, we made a decision in Alabama to build the Alabama Mutual Aid System (AMAS).

 This system is composed of law enforcement and fire teams with different capabilities.  The law enforcement teams were initially equipped as prevention and protection teams, but they have been used in the disasters mentioned above to perform public safety and security missions.  These are 25-man teams made up of law enforcements from the sheriff’s office and police departments in each of our seven homeland security regions, so we have seven local teams and one state-wide team consisting of state law enforcement officers for eight total teams.

 Our fire service teams have light, medium, and heavy rescue capabilities as well as water rescue and hazardous material response.  These teams are housed in a single fire department but are ready to do regional or state-wide response.  We built this capability for regional response, so every fire department would not try to produce these capabilities on their own which would be costly and redundant.  Again these teams have been used in all of the disasters above as well as numerous local incidents.  

 Our challenge of course is to sustain AMAS as budgets are tight.  This is a capability that it proven in Alabama, and we must keep it for our overall preparedness.

Forum:  What role did you office play in response to the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent environmental impact?

Director Collier:  We served as a support agency to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management whom the Governor designated as the lead agency for the Deepwater Horizon response.  Alabama Department of Homeland Security is the main interface with the US Department of Homeland Security, so we helped to facilitate working with US DHS.  Also because of our relationship with local governments we helped local communities get assistance from our federal partners and the responsible party.   

Forum: What three issues would your office like to see addressed with regards federal-state interaction on issues of homeland security?

Director Collier:

1.      I would like to see more flexibility given to the states in federal homeland security grant funding.  We are restricted in some of things that we can do, but I am optimistic with the proposal of the National Preparedness Grant Program (NPGP).  I think the NPGP has the potential to give the homeland security advisors more flexibility to allocate resources to our needs.

2.       I hope we can see the continued federal-state interaction in information sharing.  We have made great strides since 2001 in information sharing, and that needs to continue.  The Alabama Department of Homeland Security has organization and operation control of the Alabama Fusion Center which is the US Department of Homeland Security (US DHS) recognized fusion center for Alabama.  US DHS and the FBI have worked hard to keep lines of communications open mainly into the fusion center.  I appreciate that effort, and hope it continues to mature.

3.    Finally, I would say federal-state interaction has to encompass the nation as a whole.  There may be a tendency in this environment of shrinking budgets to focus efforts on a few large states or urban areas, but if homeland security is indeed hometown security then we must keep the entire country engaged and prepared.   

Forum: The public-private interaction at the local and state level is increasingly a focal point for improving response and recovery efforts in addition to awareness and preparedness issues. How is this relationship in Alabama and what more could be done to improve the relationship?

Director Collier: The public-private interaction is absolutely a focal point to not only response and recovery, but prevention, protection, and mitigation as well.  As you know 85% of the nation’s critical infrastructure is owned by the private sector, so we must engage them as partners.  In February, we invited 50 of our private sector partners to a seminar conducted by the Alabama Fusion Center where we gave them briefings on the capabilities of the fusion center and the state’s critical infrastructure protection plan.  More importantly, we wanted to hear from them about what type of information sharing they want from us.  We need to know what information that the largest utility or the largest shopping mall needs.  It is very important to establish a dialogue with the private sector, so they feel comfortable with sharing information with us.  If we can get information about a suspicious vehicle at a gate or a cut in a fence line to our fusion center and then share it with other state fusion centers and our federal partners it may be a part of a larger pattern and we can prevent an incident before it happens then that would be a tremendous success for us all.

Forum: Thank you.