WASHINGTON -- As people in Allegheny County sifted through debris after the 2004 flood, county officials were scrounging for money to get flood victims back in their homes and keep them warm as winter set in.

They turned to Community Development Block Grants, a source of federal funds which has long aided revitalization projects in the greater Pittsburgh area. With the help of local foundations, they put together several programs which provided furnaces and hot water tanks for damaged homes, in addition to helping people and businesses rebuild.

FEDERAL BLOCK GRANTS (Amounts shown are in millions)
Recipient	2003	2004	2005	2006
Allegheny County	$19.5	$19.3	$18.4	$16.6
Beaver County	4.7	4.7	4.4	4.0
Erie	4.4	4.3	4.1	3.6
Pittsburgh	20.7	20.3	19.1	17.1
PA State Program	*58.9	60	55.5	50
Washington County	5.3	5.2	4.9	4.4
Westmoreland County	5.3	5.3	5.0	4.5
* The PA State Program is the allocation directly to the state to parcel out community block grants to smaller municipalities and rural areas.

But in the $2.77 trillion budget the Bush administration delivered to Congress last week, the White House is seeking to cut the 1974-era Community Development Block Grant program by at least a fifth.

The proposed saving, more than $735 million over a year, is a small step toward the administration's goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009. But to some local officials, the cut illustrates how domestic programs are being squeezed to pay for the Iraq war, which is costing the nation about $5 billion a month, or to make the president's tax cuts permanent, at a cost of $1.4 trillion over 10 years.

The White House sought significant cuts in the community grants last year, but Congress balked, shrinking the program by 11 percent. The administration has argued the block grant program is ineffective, and that the formula for parceling out money should target a larger share of economically distressed communities.

Last year, the Bush administration proposed merging the block grant program with 17 other programs under the authority of the Commerce Department and reducing the level of funding, which was $4.7 billion for the community development grants alone, to $3.7 billion for the grants as well as the 17 other programs.

But local officials pushed back against that proposal and say they are determined to persuade Congress to reject the president's request for next year.

There is some discrepancy about the size of this year's proposed cut. The 20 percent reduction is according to analyses by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Other groups say their calculations show it could be more than 25 percent when adjusted for inflation, bringing the program to its lowest level in more than a decade.

"The story here is that, in the past four years, we've received about a $3 million cut. We used to get $19.5 [million]. Now we get $16.5 million, and it's been absolutely devastating to our communities that need it the most," said Dennis M. Davin, who oversees the distribution of the block grant money for Allegheny County.

During the 1990s, Pittsburgh and Allegheny County received more than $40 million combined annually, and the money was used for projects that either eliminated slums and blight or benefited low to moderate income people. The flexibility built into the grants allowed projects to range from the demolition of dilapidated houses to repair of collapsed sewer lines to the affordable senior housing projects which were built along Sixth Street in Duquesne.

Last year, 127 municipalities, through Allegheny County, submitted more than 450 requests; the county was able to approve about half.

Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato said the current formula had been particularly beneficial to communities in Western Pennsylvania, because it factored in not only median income of residents, but also the age of the communities, allowing projects such as brownfield cleanup and redevelopment of old mill sites along the waterfront.

The White House is pushing to change the formula for calculating the grants, because it says the money is going to older but more affluent communities. A White House analysis found that the 200 poorest communities in America were receiving about 10 percent less money than they did in the first year of funding, and, it says, communities should have to show results in expanding ownership or opportunity.

But Mr. Onorato argued that inefficiencies in the program could be addressed on a case-by-case basis.

"If a member of Congress has a problem with the way block grants are being spent in a particular area, then penalize that area. Don't penalize the entire program," Mr. Onorato said.

Members of the Western Pennsylvania delegation appear to be more sympathetic to local officials' concerns than they are to White House goals, and they might be particularly responsive in an election year.

The drop in block grant money was one of the first proposals Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., criticized in the president's proposal.

U.S. Rep. Phil English, R-Erie, said this week that the money was particularly critical to areas "teetering on the edge" because of their low tax bases, such as Erie, which has lost about $750,000 in the block grant money over the past three years.

"We fought off the administration last year," Mr. English said. "I don't think we are going to look at community development block grants as a priority for cutting."

U.S. Rep. Melissa Hart, R-Bradford Woods, said many communities in her district also had relied on the grants for projects such as main street revitalizations and street lighting. Beaver County, which is in her district, has lost about 16 percent of its block grant funds since 2003.

"The only place they can receive support to do the things they need to do is through this program," Ms. Hart said. This year's proposed reduction, she said, "is probably going to be too much."

Ms. Hart said she planned to fight part of the proposal that would sweep the $24 million stand-alone brownfields redevelopment program into the community development block grant program. Although block grants can be used for brownfield redevelopment, as Allegheny County has done, the separate fund also has been available for such work.

"That obviously is one [program] that is of paramount importance to the communities all over when you think about the Northeast and the Midwest, because, again, it allows some progress in our goal, which is to help make sure these towns can revitalize abandoned areas," Ms. Hart said. "Eliminating [brownfield redevelopment] money completely would throw that program into CDBG, which puts even more pressure on a CDBG with less money than it even had before."

Congress will decide whether to enact the president's proposals as it shapes the budget this year.