WASHINGTON -- Two and a half years after Sept. 11, 2001, three of four U.S. cities, many of them cash-strapped like Pittsburgh, have not received money from the homeland security program that is supposed to help local police and fire officials prevent or respond to a terrorist attack.

One by one yesterday, an angry array of city leaders attending the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting complained that the money appropriated by Congress is being distributed through the states and that bureaucratic red tape has kept most of them from getting a penny under the highly touted first-responder program.

A survey of 215 cities in all 50 states and Puerto Rico found that cities are paying for increased security by tightening already-overstretched belts in other areas and are not happy about it. The study, done for the mayors with funds provided by a security software firm called SentryPoints, found that 76 percent of 215 cities surveyed have received no money at all for improving their first response in the event of an attack or protecting "critical infrastructures,'' although Congress appropriated $1.5 billion.

Forty-six percent of cities have not been reimbursed for additional law enforcement requirements at airports. Of cities with ports vulnerable to attack, 64 percent said they are not receiving funds for the extra security which the federal government says they are responsible for providing, although there is $245 million set aside for it.

Another 64 percent of the cities said they hadn't gotten any funds from $556 million allocated for state domestic preparedness.

The survey did show some improvement: Five months ago, 90 percent of 168 cities surveyed said they had yet to receive a dime of money for first responders. And eight of 10 cities say they expect to receive money soon from the $1.4 billion allocated for health and hospital emergency preparedness.

In Pittsburgh, city Operations Director Bob Kennedy said that over the past two years, the city has learned how to adequately redeploy police and other public safety staff during terror-alert upgrades. But he said it has received little federal money for long-term planning on Downtown evacuation or to train and equip personnel.

Last year, Pittsburgh was promised $5 million from Washington, filtered via state agencies, but that hasn't yet come, Kennedy said. "All those things that make you ready, that is what is suffering here," he said.

Extra emergency preparedness cost the cash-strapped city budget $10 million from 2001 through 2003. The city is set to run a $50 million deficit in 2004, state-appointed financial investigators have reported.

The mayors' survey came on the same day President Bush said he is asking Congress for $30 billion for homeland security in the budget for fiscal year 2005, which begins Oct. 1. But the mayors' conference president, Mayor James Garner of Hempstead, N.Y., said the problem is that the money should go straight to cities, based on the threat level, not through states on a per-capita basis.

Bush is to speak to the mayors today, and Garner said he'll tell the president to change his mind on using the mechanism that routes money through state governments.

"As I always say, homeland security money went to the states by Federal Express but came to cities by Pony Express,'' Garner said. He called the new survey "a national call for improving the system.''

Scott King, chairman of the mayors and police chiefs task force and mayor of Gary, Ind., at high risk for terror attack because of its chemical plants, said spending on homeland security is a shell game with no pea. "I believe most of the leaders in Washington think this is working. They don't realize [the money] is off their desk but not on our desks,'' he said.

At the same time cities' security costs have skyrocketed, funding for the COPS program and local law enforcement block grants has been cut, King complained. He also lamented that "more than half of the cities said they have not been at the table to influence decisions and coordinate response efforts. Cities know their needs best.''

Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley, co-chairman of the mayors' homeland security task force, said, "It's really, really distressing we're still studying how we might get the money when the president just said the threat is still there.''

Many mayors said they'd like a trigger to automatically send money to cities if it doesn't reach them within 45 days.

In congressional testimony last Sept. 3, Paul Posner, a federal budget expert for the General Accounting Office, the watchdog arm of Congress, said that despite dramatic funding increases for combating terrorism, the system of getting federal grants to local communities is "not well suited to provide assurance that scarce federal funds are, in fact, enhancing the nation's preparedness in the places most at risk.''

After the Bush administration raised the threat alert just before Christmas to "elevated" or orange, the second-highest level, local officials around the country complained that they didn't have the money for increased expenses such as police overtime. There were rumbles that the federal government wouldn't even know whether local cities had responded to the elevated threat because cities respond in different ways, depending on how vulnerable they are to terrorism.

Garner said cities don't have the option to opt out of ratcheting up terror prevention efforts such as around-the-clock guards at airports, ports, power and water filtration plants. "We have to do it,'' he said.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said his financially stressed city must provide city police cars to help protect its border with Canada but has received no money for police overtime.

"That is not my job, to provide national security,'' he said.