North Dakota is getting $19.5 million for homeland security, about $1 million more than the state received last fiscal year.

Gov. John Hoeven said most of the money will go toward strengthening law enforcement and other emergency first-response agencies across the state, "agencies at the very heart of homeland defense."

"The funding will help us respond not only to potential terrorist attacks, but also to other common emergencies," Hoeven said.

Last year, North Dakota received $18.4 million for similar purposes.

The money is appropriated by Congress and distributed by the federal Department of Homeland Security office for Domestic Preparedness. It requires no local or state match, said Wayne Baron, homeland security team leader for the North Dakota Division of Emergency Management.

That agency is working on a strategy for spending the money, which is for fiscal 2004. The fiscal year started in September and runs through next August.

"It's a massive effort that's being done in every county," Baron said. "Based on that data, we're going to be writing a homeland security strategy for the state of North Dakota that will include this amount and amounts in the future."

The statewide assessment, which involves county emergency managers and analyzes such factors as population density and areas that are vulnerable to terrorists, should wrap up by the end of the year, Baron said.

"We're collecting the data now; we should have it by mid-November," he said. "Then we'll have to start crunching the numbers."

While most of the money will go to state and local agencies that would deal directly with a terrorist attack, Hoeven said $300,000 will support Citizen Corps programs in North Dakota, which are designed to encourage volunteerism to better protect local areas.