Pretty much everyone in New York and Washington were in a tizzy last week over the announcement that both cities would be receiving less federal counter-terrorism dollars than last year. Responding to news that the District’s allocation would drop from $77 million to $46 million, police chief Charles Ramsey angrily stated, “It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out these are two cities still at risk.” D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams was similarly unhappy, stating in a press release, “I think it was very shortsighted for the federal government to gut our homeland security funding program. We learned the hard way on September 11 that terrorists want to kill innocent Americans and that Washington, D.C. and New York City are among their top targets.”

But could the opposite be true? Could fewer federal dollars for counter-terrorism programs actually make the District and New York safer than they are by prioritizing needed programs and discouraging wasteful spending? One contributor to D.C. Watch’s The Mail thinks so:

I’m sure I’m in the minority but I’m convinced that we are not one whit more secure from terrorists than we were before the formation of the WPA of this decade, Homeland Security. The 40 percent proposed cut in Homeland Security funding for DC will only reduce the paranoia embraced by the police and other so-called security personnel here in DC. Folks I know who work in the Homeland Security Administration tell me that it is the most dysfunctional and inefficient, ineffective bureaucracy they have ever worked in. Less funding equals less paranoia.

What say you, readers? Will the District really be more prone to attacks as a consequence of these cuts, or will the government simply become better and doing more with less?