State IT officials make a case for cyber grant reauthorization before House subcommittee
State IT officials make a case for cyber grant reauthorization before House subcommittee
https://statescoop.com/state-local-cyber-grant-program-house-subcommittee/
Publish Date: 2026-05-21 19:19:00
Source Domain: statescoop.com
Several state technology officials on Thursday brought before a House Homeland Security subcommittee a request that Congress reauthorize funding for the expired State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program and renew cybersecurity programs inside the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency that have been decommissioned under the Trump administration.
Led by Rep. Andy Ogles, a Republican from Tennessee who chairs the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection, and who introduced legislation approved by the House last year to reauthorize SLCGP grant funding, state officials said their organizations, and the local governments they assist, are facing cybersecurity challenges can be met far more readily with aid from the federal government. Colin Ahern, New York State’s director of security and intelligence, summarized the problem in his opening statement when he said that “our states are on the front lines of multiple cyber conflicts, yet we are being asked to manage nation-state risks while our federal partners step back.”
Over the course of more than two hours, state officials explained the many benefits that the grant program had afforded their local governments over four years of funding. Tennessee Chief Information Officer Kristin Darby said that her state’s local governments, which she described as having “little or no dedicated cybersecurity staff” and are living with “a dangerous imbalance between highly sophisticated attackers and severely resource constrained defenders,” found consistent improvement in their defenses after regular participation in the grant program. Through the grant program, which provided $1 billion for states and local governments through 2021’s infrastructure bill, Tennessee secured nearly 90,000 endpoints on local government networks, said Darby, adding that “many of these local governments simply could not deploy or sustain these capabilities on their own.”
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