AFGE Applauds The Move To Not Consider Any Additional Airports In SPP Effort

Just a month after saying it was "neutral" on the issue, TSA Administrator John Pistole (pictured) has said he will not expand a program which allows airports to hire private contractors for passenger screening. The head of the agency said Friday that the program would be shut off at the current 16 airports which currently have contract screeners.

As recently as December, TSA had said it was willing to work with a airports which were looking into hiring private screeners, which would have supervised and paid by TSA and using the same screening procedures as the government agency. But media sources including CNN and Fox News report that Pistole said in a statement that he has "examined the contractor screening program and decided not to expand the program beyond the current 16 airports as I do not see any clear or substantial advantage to do so at this time."

Florida Congressman John Mica (R-6), who chairs the House Transportation Committee, told CNN he plans to call for an investigation into the matter. "It's unimaginable that TSA would suspend the most successfully performing passenger screening program we've had over the last decade," Mica said Friday night. "The agency should concentrate on cutting some of the more than 3,700 administrative personnel in Washington who concocted this decision, and reduce the army of TSA employees that has ballooned to more than 62,000."

The American Federation of Government Employees praised Pistole for capping the privatization of airport screening functions, also known as the Screening Partnership Program (SPP).

"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" AFGE National President John Gage said. "We applaud Administrator Pistole for recognizing the value in a cohesive federalized screening system and workforce."

Airports have had the option of opting out of the federal screener system since TSA was created. Pistole's memo to the TSA workforce said "to preserve TSA as an effective, federal counterterrorism security network, SPP will not be expanded beyond the current 16 airports, unless a clear and substantial advantage to do so emerges in the future."

FMI: www.tsaunion.com, www.tsa.gov, http://mica.house.gov