More from the half-wits, and this will piss you off>
Airport-Security Agency
Draws Ire With Spending
By STEPHEN POWER
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In August, recruiters for the federal agency in charge of protecting air travelers went looking for the right hotel to interview job applicants in southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico.
The Best Western in Durango, Colo., home of the region's busiest airport, has self-serve coffee and donuts at $112 a night. The Holiday Inn in Farmington, N.M., with a 3,000-square foot ballroom, costs $55 a night.
But the 20 or so recruiters for the Transportation Security Administration chose the Wyndham Peaks Resort and Golden Door Spa near Telluride, a ski resort town, with an 18-hole golf course, indoor and outdoor pools, fluffy robes and oversized bathrooms -- at $147 a night. They stayed for seven weeks to fill 50 airport-screener jobs.
While at the resort, they also paid $29,000 for extra security to the local Mountain Village police department, whose chief said that on some days, only one or two job candidates showed up.
TSA officials say the Wyndham Peaks -- more than an hour's drive on winding, two-lane highways from most of the region's airports -- was the only facility with enough space and high-speed Internet lines to meet their needs in a hurry. They say the resort was a bargain, and that they succeeded in filling their jobs.
Still, the choice of a remote luxury resort illustrates a pattern at the TSA, which claims it doesn't have enough money to do its job. Created by Congress last fall after the Sept. 11 attacks, the TSA is rushing to meet congressionally imposed deadlines for taking over airport security. But its spending decisions have frayed its relations with Capitol Hill and stalled its progress on various security goals.
The agency acknowledged spending about $400,000 earlier this year so its then-chief, John Magaw, could decorate his office with mahogany-stained doors, crown molding and state-of-the-art audio equipment. In July, Mr. Magaw was forced to resign after clashes with airlines, airport executives and lawmakers.
The TSA's new head, formally called the acting undersecretary of transportation for security, is James Loy, a retired U.S. Coast Guard commandant. Mr. Loy is trying to mend relations with lawmakers upset about the TSA's spending habits, while also trying to persuade them to approve the agency's funding requests.
The TSA postponed a project to reduce waits at airport security checkpoints because of a fight with Congress about the cost and effectiveness of the technology it wants to use. A recent government audit shows it is paying private security firms, at soaring rates, for work that doesn't get finished and for employees who don't show up. And it asked lawmakers for permission to hire 15,000 "shoe and bin runners," "ticket checkers" and other workers that aren't called for under the law setting up the agency.
Lawmakers from both parties have taken note. "We will not hire a standing army of 70,000 full-time people to screen your bags, take off your shoes and check your briefcase three times," says Harold Rogers (R., Ky.), chairman of the House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee. Mr. Rogers's panel refused to approve the agency's 2003 budget request of $5.3 billion by Oct. 1, the start of the current fiscal year. Instead, House lawmakers passed a stopgap spending bill that caps the TSA's work force at 45,000, well below the 67,000 staff the agency requested.
The TSA's spending also raises a timely question as Congress debates the creation of a new Department of Homeland Security: How much waste should the nation tolerate at government agencies charged with fighting terrorism?
Mr. Rogers has complained about "a cornucopia of wasteful spending" by the TSA on private security firms that are contracting with the agency to screen passengers and their luggage until federal replacements are ready. The TSA has acknowledged cases in which screening companies billed the government for "employees who were on vacation" and "for services not performed." But last year, Mr. Rogers was among many House Republicans arguing to keep such duties in the hands of private firms, with government oversight, rather than creating a new federal work force of tens of thousands of airport screeners.
"There's a little bit of irony when you come along and argue that the contractor is gouging us, when you're the one who was arguing for making the screeners a contract work force," says Paul Light, director of the Brookings Institution's Center for Public Service. "The tension here is between setting a lot of deadlines and expecting the agency to do the impossible, and then coming along six months later and focusing on a bunch of mistakes. You can't do what's being asked of the TSA while you're looking over your shoulder at the auditors waiting for you to stumble."
Mr. Rogers contends the contractors' overbilling reflects more the TSA's "lax management" and that it says nothing about the merits of contracting with private firms. He says the agency needs to make smarter technology purchases, such as metal detectors that can screen passengers more quickly than workers with hand-held devices. "Anyone who flies will tell you they've [the TSA] got a lot of people at the checkpoints who aren't necessary," Mr. Rogers says.
A visit to a TSA job-candidate testing site in Reston, Va., near Washington, shows how inefficient the war on terrorism can be. Inside a large hotel conference room equipped with about 90 shiny computers, there were only four people taking a multiple-choice test during a recent weekday morning. Upstairs, in one of more than two dozen rooms reserved by the TSA since late July, three contract employees listened to light jazz on the radio as they waited to record candidates' fingerprints for criminal background checks. The other rooms also housed a host of contract workers and support staff there to conduct drug tests and physical exams, and administer eye tests to the applicants. In three hours, the background checkers processed 12 applicants. They say on a typically busier day, they process 12 per hour.
Officials with Pearson PLC's unit, NCS Pearson, of Eden Prairie, Minn., which is recruiting the screeners, said they were winding down their use of the center and originally planned to shut it down in mid-September. But recruiting candidates for jobs at nearby Dulles International took longer than expected. One problem: The airport has no subway connecting it to Washington, and not all job candidates have cars.
TSA officials say they'll still meet the Nov. 19 deadline for having federally trained screeners at security checkpoints. The agency has asked a Defense Department office that oversees contracts to monitor TSA contractors' bills. As for the rates charged by screening companies -- in some cases double what airlines had paid before the government took over the contracts last February -- TSA officials said they were needed to keep the companies on the job.
"When you have this much to do in this little time, you run the risk of making decisions that you would have made differently if you'd had more time," TSA spokesman Robert Johnson says.
The Bush administration has tried to make the agency more businesslike by recruiting executives from Walt Disney Co., Intel Corp., Marriott International Inc. and FedEx Corp. But business expertise hasn't necessarily made the TSA less bureaucratic. The director of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Gina Marie Lindsey, says the TSA lost precious time needed to make the Dec. 31 deadline for screening all checked luggage when it sent Raytheon Co. consultants to study the airport's design last May, and followed up with a team from Boeing Co. weeks later to verify Raytheon's conclusions. |
