Security screening at US airports remains a major headache for all concerned, and a move to the private sector offers little encouragement

The US government's private-sector solution for the screening of hand and hold baggage is unlikely to work any better than the dilemma it was meant to resolve. That, airports are learning, is the hard truth about the latest proposed answer to the growing hassle of airport screening.

As traffic returns and airport terminal queues grow longer, US airports have been placing hopes on a provision of the 2001 security law that will allow some airports to opt out of the federal regime and instead use private employees. But recent tests and audits have found little difference in the performance of federal screeners and of private sector employees at the five airports that are still allowed to use private guards. Clark Kent Ervin, the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general, said of the two: "They performed about the same, which is to say equally poorly."

The five airports - Jackson Hole, Kansas City, Rochester, San Francisco and Tupelo - were designated as test beds for non-government screeners in the hastily passed 2001 law that made airport security a federal responsibility and created the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to manage it. The private screeners at the five airports operate under tight TSA supervision and receive the same training as their government counterparts.

As of mid-November, airports can ask the TSA to let them replace federal screeners with private-sector employees. Attracted by the prospect of greater efficiency, and more scheduling flexibility, some 100 airports have expressed interested in privatisation. These airports are also attracted by the fact that by law, screeners are not supposed to join a union, although labour groups are challenging that prohibition.

Comparing performance

But at best, private screeners at the five airports missed the same number of weapons or other prohibited items as federal screeners, according to former KPMG consultancy BearingPoint. TSA hired BearingPoint to compare the performance of private screeners at those airports with that of federal screeners between December and mid-March.

Some airport heads are concerned that the tests of the non-government screeners did not give valid results because the screeners did not employ the flexibility in scheduling, hiring and deployment that is intended for the opt-out airports. BearingPoint's evaluation director Patrick Pacious, speaking before the House aviation subcommittee, gave some support to that belief, commented that "the design of the private screening programme severely limits the opportunity for difference in the two models".

The news was a blow to the privatisation supporters, of whom the most prominent is House aviation subcommittee chairman John Mica. The Florida Republican says the classified results he had seen about how badly screeners - both federal and private - do in detecting explosive devices "scare me".

His comments reflect the dilemma facing Republicans in Congress and all who questioned the addition of 45,000 screeners to the federal workforce. It also crystallises the way in which the issue has become part of larger debate in a presidential campaign season that puts considerable emphasis on jobs.

"While problems with the Soviet-style federal screening operations should raise the serious concern of Congress, anyone who has seen the classified performance results and detection rates of this system and does not call for reform is derelict in their responsibility," says Mica. "The ineptness of TSA to staff these airports is legendary. They'll never get it right because it's big government."

Mica adds that screener vacancy rates exceed 20% at some major airports, with Los Angeles, for example, having 290 unfilled positions. The General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, surveyed 15 large airports last year and found that 11 had numbers of screener staff below their authorised levels. Turnover averages 15% a year, according to the investigators.

Arguing for what he calls a "decentralised screening programme", Mica says: "It is difficult or impossible to micromanage the employment, training and deployment of tens of thousands of screeners from Washington DC to scores of differently configured airports with fluctuating scheduling requirements."

Some Democrats on the committee said hiring private security screeners, with the same pay and benefits as those working for the federal government agency, was part of a Bush administration drive to privatise the federal workforce. The preservation of union and government jobs is a hot issue in this election year, and Demo-crats have fought even limited moves to contract out some FAA functions.

Public sentiment

And as military subcontractors in Iraq come under fire for price overruns and abuses, the Democrats have gained public sentiment against private sector assumption of government functions. A New Jersey Democratic representative, Robert Menendez, says: "If I didn't know better, I'd think TSA is almost complicit so we can go to private security screeners." Menendez is a member of the Democratic Party leadership and represents a working-class, heavily unionised area.

But hiring more screeners - a solution that is either intuitive or knee-jerk, depending on one's politics - is not about to happen. The congressman who controls TSA's purse-strings, Republican Representative Hal Rogers, says: "We are just not going to have any more of the wild hiring that they have done. We're spending zillions of dollars on manpower we don't need - they already have more than 45,000 screeners."

Last year, the TSA cut 14,000 positions to reduce its screener workforce to 45,000, the level mandated by the appropriations subcommittee on homeland security that Rogers chairs, although the level is now criticised by aviation and airport officials as inadequate. The number fell to about 44,000 this year as screeners left but were not immediately replaced.

Rogers is harshly critical of the TSA's spending and personnel practices. He says: "I think that it is time for them to aggressively deploy cutting-edge technologies." Indeed, both sides have turned to technology as a means of resolving the situation, but have found the way blocked as the government and airports continue their long-running feud about who will pay for it. On that front there is no sign of resolution.

Rogers has told TSA officials that he is "furious" over what he sees as "foot-dragging" and "short-sightedness" on a grant programme to support airport installation of the most advanced "in-line" screening systems. These combine explosives detection screening units with bag-handling systems, integrating the inspection and the bag-loading process.

The funding programme, based on a Letter of Intent (LOI) scheme, is meant to spend as much as $3 billion on as many as 55 projects in the years 2003-7. This money is supposed to support a federal share of the work of 90% at larger airports and 95% at smaller airports, with the remaining percentage coming from the airport's own funding.

The LOI scheme is designed to let the government stretch the investment over several years by guaranteeing a funding stream. But TSA has only signed eight LOIs covering nine airports and has agreed to fund only 75% of those projects. Rogers says this action "is tantamount to asking Congress to nullify provisions that were adopted just last year".

In addition, TSA acting administrator David Stone has told Rogers that the agency would not fund any more LOI requests beyond the eight it has agreed to, at a total of about $955 million. The nine airports that received LOIs before the cut-off are Atlanta, Boston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles International, Ontario, Phoenix and Seattle/Tacoma. But these too face a squeeze. At Dallas/Fort Worth the difference between the 75% and the 90% reimbursement is about $21 million, and despite the efforts of the area's powerful congressional delegation to get the TSA to cover this shortfall, the airport has had to include that amount in its most recent bond issue.

The Reason Foundation's Bob Poole, a long-time observer of airport security, says: "The only way to produce long-term savings is to make the one-time investments that allow baggage screening do be done far less labour intensively."

Miami, in the middle of a $4.8 billion renovation, was not chosen for an LOI. "That makes us feel that the Miami-Dade County community has been dumped on," says airport manager Angela Gittens. "The programme was a convenience to the TSA and a way for it to hasten achievement of its mandate, and now the TSA walks away from its mandate." The pressure to limit spending comes from the White House itself, says Gittens, through its Office of Management and Budget. OMB, as the central cheque-signer is known, says it is concerned about the lack of "a source of dedicated funding", using the code phrase for a new tax or user fee.

For now it seems that such concerns over security will only heighten as the US struggles to create a regime that can both be funded and that works.

REPORT BY DAVID FIELD IN WASHINGTON

Source: Airline Business