Aviation securityPistole takes aim at Mica
The decision by the TSA to deny an application by Springfield-Branson Airport in Missouri to privatize its checkpoint workforce signals a turnaround in TSA policy; until recently TSA said it neither endorsed nor opposed private screening; TSA would keep contractors at sixteen out of roughly 460 U.S. airports, but would refuse to employ others elsewhere unless clear advantages were made known
Despite passenger complaints about federal screeners at airports and the efforts of a prominent Florida congressman, the TSA has said that it will halt the hiring of private contractors to screen airline passengers. In a memo to his employees, TSA administrator John Pistole said that the TSA would keep contractors at sixteen out of roughly 460 U.S. airports, but would refuse to employ others elsewhere unless clear advantages were made known.
With the unease that followed a tightening of TSA passenger screenings, Florida Republican Representative John Mica wrote to the country’s busiest airports asking them to use private security guards (“Rep. John Mica urges airports to privatize security screening” 16 December 2010 HSNW). Mica has also criticized the TSA’s SPOT program in a letter to DHS secretary Napolitano which costs “U.S. taxpayers $212 million annually, and nearly $1.2 billion over the next five years.”
At the time, the TSA said it neither endorsed nor opposed private screening, but the denial of an application by Springfield-Branson Airport in Missouri to privatize its checkpoint workforce signals a turnaround in TSA policy.
Pistole said he has been reviewing TSA policies with the goal of helping the agency “evolve into a more agile, high-performance organization.”
Mica, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, plans to launch an investigation into the security innovations provided by contractors since the beginning of the TSA.
According to National Treasury Employees Union president Colleen Kelley, Pistole’s standstill development supports the federal employment system. “NTEU has always argued that there is core work in every agency that is inherently governmental,” Kelley said. “That has always been our argument about airport security workers.”
American Federation of Government Employees national president John Gage applauded Pistole’s stance on the issue and added “The nation is secure in the sense that the safety of our skies will not be left in the hands of the lowest-bidder contractor, as it was before 9/11”
Mica’s support of the privatized service has been repeatedly linked to an analysis by the Associate Press that found he received $81,000 in campaign donations from political action committees and executives. In a conversation with Homeland Security NewsWire, Mica’s spokesman, Just Harclerode, said that the publication had “lumped together contributions over his entire career which predated 9/11 and all the issues involving screening by a number of years. [Mica] didn’t even know until the AP story that Lockheed and Raytheon were involved in the private screening business.”
