HARRISBURG, Pa. - Pennsylvania has done a poor job overseeing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal homeland security grants, making it hard to evaluate if the spending has improved the state's disaster-response capabilities, three reports found.

The reports said record-keeping has been so inadequate that state emergency officials, who must approve local requests for the money, cannot say whether equipment that has been purchased is still in use or where it is.

More than $400 million in federal money has been committed to Pennsylvania since Sept. 11, 2001. About half has been spent, the bulk of it on equipment.

The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, the reports concluded, was ill-prepared to manage all the money once it began flowing in.

The reports were prepared by the state Legislative Budget and Finance Committee, the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and a private firm, James Lee Witt Associates of Washington, D.C. They were issued in October and November but received little attention then.

The state's new director of emergency management, Gen. Robert P. French, did not dispute the findings. But he told The Associated Press he is confident local emergency response officials have, in general, put the money to good use in spite of oversight failures at the state level.

"We've got qualified first-responders out there," French said. "You're presuming they're going to do the right thing, and I think by and large, from what I've seen so far, by and large they have. But we can certainly do better."

French, who left a senior position with the Pennsylvania National Guard to join PEMA, said a private firm will be hired to create a computerized inventory of purchases and that he is working to devise a strategy for building a more efficient, better-trained emergency response force.

The administration of Gov. Ed Rendell also has begun restructuring the agency since a failed response to a snowstorm last February that left motorists stranded overnight on eastern Pennsylvania highways.

In their reports, the authors paint a picture of a state emergency management overwhelmed by the job of managing all the homeland security grants, with neither the staff nor training to effectively administer the program.

As a result of those shortcomings, nine regional task forces often dictated what to buy and were left to manage the equipment without much direction from the state.

The reports are rife with examples of spotty oversight , for example, PEMA skipped site visits to check on equipment inventories around the state.

The grants are to be used to help firefighters, police and local officials respond to prevent or respond to natural disasters, accidents or acts of terrorism, and can be used for everything from multimillion-dollar radio communication systems to Tyvek boot covers. The grants also may be used to cover administrative and training costs, but not to construct buildings, pay fire or police salaries, or buy weapons.

Pennsylvania is not the first state to be criticized for management of its program. Colorado and Texas, for instance, were the subject of blistering federal audits.

Congressional investigators in 2005 said federal officials had failed to give strong direction to state and local officials on how to prioritize the spending.

The Sept. 11 Commission also criticized the homeland security grants as "pork-barrel" spending because the money until recently was distributed to states by population, instead of risk.

The federal report on Pennsylvania's program said the state has an acceptable purchasing program and security strategy, and generally used the money within grant guidelines.

But it said Pennsylvania "did not establish a written plan to monitor nor did they monitor financial or programmatic performance or effectiveness against its agency's strategic goals."

Federal auditors also found that Pennsylvania misspent $721,300 from 2002 to 2004 by not sufficiently reviewing projects for unauthorized expenditures , specifically maintenance agreements, spare parts and warranties.

PEMA officials acknowledged they did not always check to make sure purchases were on the state's approved buying list, nor did they make sure the purchases followed the security strategy.

The agency's lack of a computerized inventory of purchases was cited as a major oversight problem. If a piece of equipment is transferred, broken or taken out of service, PEMA would not necessarily know about it.

"Currently, there is no centralized database of what equipment has been purchased ... or where the equipment is located," the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee report said. "In some cases, this information can only be found by searching paper records at the task force or county level."

James Lee Witt Associates, which studied the program at the governor's request, said the grant process was unfocused and pointed to a lack of coordination between state and local authorities.

French told the AP that training will be a focus of future expenditures, particularly to ensure that new equipment is put to the best possible use.

"There's a real need to have better accountability, without question," he said. "And the reason is so you can respond. Hours, minutes make the difference, so we've got to do everything we can to understand where the equipment is."