The state is partly to blame, Anderson said, because it "skims off" as much as 20 percent of the dwindling resources for programs and administration.

The Homeland Security program "has been a disaster for many of our cities,” he told fellow mayors and Homeland Security officials at the U.S. Conference of Mayors conference Tuesday. “We need to take a different approach, and I think the mayors need to speak up.”

Since the Department of Homeland Security centralized law enforcement programs, and eliminated others, Salt Lake City has received less than $1 million in federal funding. The city would get more than that each year before the consolidation.

Anderson said Salt Lake City's federal law enforcement block grant alone has been cut by more than 75 percent, from $430,000 in 2001 to just $89,000 last year.

For years, mayors have argued that first responder and preparedness dollars should go straight to the cities instead of states, which are allowed to keep a portion for state programs and administration.

In Utah, those funds have been spent to benefit the local governments, said Derek Jensen, spokesman for the Utah Division of Emergency Services and Homeland Security.

Over the past three years, the state used the federal dollars to pay for the Utah Wireless Integrated Network, designed so law enforcement agencies using different communications systems can talk to one another. It has also paid for training programs offered to local law enforcement agencies free of charge.

“That money is, in essence, going back to the local community anyway, because it's something that benefits the local communities,” Jensen said.

In 2004, the federal government sent Utah $27 million. The state kept $5.4 million of that, but just $115,637 went to administering the grants, Jensen said.

“That's the bottom line: The money is for the locals," he said.

But Anderson pointed to a series of programs that have been wiped out or slashed since the Department of Homeland Security was created.

The Innovative Community Policing program provided $5 million to Salt Lake City between 1998 and 2001 and the Community Oriented Policing Service Program provided funds to hire dozens of new officers, but both have been virtually eliminated, he said.

The money Salt Lake City has received has been earmarked for the purchase of protective gear, bomb equipment and breathing tanks, but the city has been forced to come up with the money to train officers how to use them.

Anderson was not alone in his concerns.

“The pie keeps shrinking year after year,” said Baltimore Mayor Mike O'Malley, co-chairman of the U.S. Conference of Mayors Homeland Security Task Force. “The less we invest in American security, the less secure we become.”

David Hagy, director of local coordination at the Department of Homeland Security, said he would take the mayors' message back to policy-makers.

“Our job in DHS is to make sure the entire pot of money is sent out in the most effective manner,” Hagy said.