Flydaplane
Well-known member
- Joined
- Dec 19, 2001
- Posts
- 232
Looks like Congress is screwing things up again. It's a pretty long article but paragraphs 12-13 cover the transportation workers ID badges.
By David Bond/Aviation Week & Space Technology
13-Sep-2002 3:05 PM U.S. EDT
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) needs $546 million more in Fiscal 2003 than it asked for originally, and its all-but-certain continuing budget resolution should be "tailored" to permit it to meet cash-flow needs and breach its current employee ceiling this fall, James M. Loy, acting TSA chief, told the Senate Commerce Committee Sept. 10.
Conceding to political reality on guns in the cockpit (see p. 54), endorsing a "trusted traveler" program and reassuring senators on personnel and baggage-screening deadlines, Loy won over committee members who had lost patience with his predecessor at the nine-month-old agency, John Magaw. Chairman Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) termed Loy "a breath of fresh air."
Loy needs more than compliments to get the TSA back on track financially, however. Because Congress cut the agency's request for an emergency Fiscal 2002 supplemental appropriation by $550 million, from $4.4 billion to $3.85 billion (AW&ST July 29, p. 44), Loy said the Bush administration has approved a $546-million increase in its budget request for Fiscal 2003. That amount could increase if equipping airports with explosives detection systems (EDS) for baggage screening costs more than expected.
More money for the coming year is one of the TSA's less complicated problems. Fiscal 2003 begins Oct. 1, but a Transportation Dept. appropriation for the year is nowhere near congressional approval--the Senate Appropriations Committee has marked up a bill for floor action but the House Appropriations Committee hasn't. This means the Transportation Dept., the TSA's parent organization, is sure to need a continuing resolution as a stopgap, allowing it to remain in operation while it waits for an appropriation. Most other federal agencies are in the same position.
A continuing resolution typically allows an agency to keep spending money at the same rate as before, without any big program starts or buildups. That's not good enough for the TSA, which faces two big deadlines, both mandated by Congress itself, in the first quarter of the new fiscal year. By Nov. 19, all screening employees at the nation's 429 airports with commercial service are to be federal employees. And by Dec. 31, all baggage checked at these airports is to be screened for bombs.
Both of these deadlines will require that the TSA spending buildup continue, because the TSA payroll and equipment purchases will continue to ramp up. And the baggage deadline also will require the TSA to exceed the personnel cap of 45,000 imposed in its earlier appropriation. "I think we'll be just fine through November or maybe even early December with that 45,000 limit," Loy said. But the ceiling will remain in effect until Congress lifts it, and Loy wants relief on both cash flow and hiring in the continuing resolution.
Congress set the limit after Magaw stunned members with an estimate that the TSA would need at least double the 32,000 employees estimated for it when the agency was created last fall. Magaw explained, and Loy repeated last week, that this was the estimate for screening passengers, and that no one changed the number when Congress added baggage as well. But Loy also admitted to "inadequate feedback from us," and he allowed that Congress's concern was "justified."
Loy put some distance between himself and Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta's earlier speculation that the supplemental budget setback might prevent the TSA from meeting its fall deadlines, and proposals from airport directors that the bomb-screening deadline be slipped by one year or more. The agency takes both deadlines "very seriously," he said.
The TSA had hired nearly 32,000 screeners by last week and is confident that the last of its contract employees will be gone by Nov. 19, Loy said. And if the agency gets its additional money and the authority to spend it fast enough, it also will satisfy the EDS checked-baggage screening deadline at well over 90% of airports. Some airports--no more than 30-35--will be late because of "lost time, lost budgets and very, very real engineering challenges." These airports include some of the largest, however, and they involve well over 10% of passenger volume.
Loy recommended that Congress authorize him or Mineta to extend the EDS screening deadline on an airport-by-airport basis, demanding in each case a plan and schedule to finish the job and an "interim mitigation strategy" for screening during the extension. Options for the latter include personnel-intensive trace detection systems, hand checks, dogs, and matching bags with passengers.
Support for sticking to the Dec. 31 deadline wasn't unanimous. John D. Rockefeller, 4th (D-W.Va.), chairman of the committee's aviation subcommittee, suggested that the TSA might give up too much by doing so. "I understand perfectly well that if you eliminate all dates, it sends a bad signal," he said. "I think it sends an even worse signal if we try to meet dates and do the job poorly."
Most committee members welcomed Loy's receptiveness to a "trusted traveler" program, by which frequent fliers would be able to subject themselves to criminal background checks and receive secure IDs that would speed them through airport security checks. But the ID is a key element of the concept, and the TSA currently is barred from work to develop a smart identification card for transportation workers, which Loy sees as the foundation for a trusted-traveler ID.
LOY SAID THE HOLD on the transportation-worker card came from Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) of the House Appropriations transportation subcommittee, who was concerned that TSA collaboration with the Defense Dept., which is developing a military ID, might leave the TSA card short of the functionality it needs for a trusted-traveler application. Loy said he is working with Rogers on how to proceed.
Surprising personnel estimates, fudging on deadlines, hostility to trusted travelers and a seeming lack of concern for customer service were emblematic of what Congress didn't like about Magaw. The Senate Appropriations Committee made clear its dissatisfaction late in July, not long after the administration bounced Magaw and installed Loy.
In its report on the Fiscal 2003 transportation appropriations bill, the committee complained about the TSA's "arrogance and disregard of the public's views." It said it wasn't satisfied with the way the agency had communicated with it and the public, and it complained that it had "struggled" to understand the TSA's poorly drawn budget proposals.
Extending an olive branch, Loy told the Commerce Committee his aim was to "pull on the same harness together rather than what has appeared to have been an unfortunate set of exchanges that don't get us anywhere."
Questioned by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Loy acknowledged that the Boeing Co. is behind schedule in its site assessments for airport baggage-screening installations. "Then look at somebody else to do it," McCain said. "Boeing has had their chance." "I will do that, sir," Loy replied.
Performance metrics from the first airports with federal workers make clear that screeners are getting better. "The evidence is overwhelming," Loy said, "that if you spend 100 hr. training a screener to do their job well, including the attitudinal end of what they do, as opposed to the five or six hours that was the average in the past, you will get an increasingly professional product on the job."
By David Bond/Aviation Week & Space Technology
13-Sep-2002 3:05 PM U.S. EDT
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) needs $546 million more in Fiscal 2003 than it asked for originally, and its all-but-certain continuing budget resolution should be "tailored" to permit it to meet cash-flow needs and breach its current employee ceiling this fall, James M. Loy, acting TSA chief, told the Senate Commerce Committee Sept. 10.
Conceding to political reality on guns in the cockpit (see p. 54), endorsing a "trusted traveler" program and reassuring senators on personnel and baggage-screening deadlines, Loy won over committee members who had lost patience with his predecessor at the nine-month-old agency, John Magaw. Chairman Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) termed Loy "a breath of fresh air."
Loy needs more than compliments to get the TSA back on track financially, however. Because Congress cut the agency's request for an emergency Fiscal 2002 supplemental appropriation by $550 million, from $4.4 billion to $3.85 billion (AW&ST July 29, p. 44), Loy said the Bush administration has approved a $546-million increase in its budget request for Fiscal 2003. That amount could increase if equipping airports with explosives detection systems (EDS) for baggage screening costs more than expected.
More money for the coming year is one of the TSA's less complicated problems. Fiscal 2003 begins Oct. 1, but a Transportation Dept. appropriation for the year is nowhere near congressional approval--the Senate Appropriations Committee has marked up a bill for floor action but the House Appropriations Committee hasn't. This means the Transportation Dept., the TSA's parent organization, is sure to need a continuing resolution as a stopgap, allowing it to remain in operation while it waits for an appropriation. Most other federal agencies are in the same position.
A continuing resolution typically allows an agency to keep spending money at the same rate as before, without any big program starts or buildups. That's not good enough for the TSA, which faces two big deadlines, both mandated by Congress itself, in the first quarter of the new fiscal year. By Nov. 19, all screening employees at the nation's 429 airports with commercial service are to be federal employees. And by Dec. 31, all baggage checked at these airports is to be screened for bombs.
Both of these deadlines will require that the TSA spending buildup continue, because the TSA payroll and equipment purchases will continue to ramp up. And the baggage deadline also will require the TSA to exceed the personnel cap of 45,000 imposed in its earlier appropriation. "I think we'll be just fine through November or maybe even early December with that 45,000 limit," Loy said. But the ceiling will remain in effect until Congress lifts it, and Loy wants relief on both cash flow and hiring in the continuing resolution.
Congress set the limit after Magaw stunned members with an estimate that the TSA would need at least double the 32,000 employees estimated for it when the agency was created last fall. Magaw explained, and Loy repeated last week, that this was the estimate for screening passengers, and that no one changed the number when Congress added baggage as well. But Loy also admitted to "inadequate feedback from us," and he allowed that Congress's concern was "justified."
Loy put some distance between himself and Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta's earlier speculation that the supplemental budget setback might prevent the TSA from meeting its fall deadlines, and proposals from airport directors that the bomb-screening deadline be slipped by one year or more. The agency takes both deadlines "very seriously," he said.
The TSA had hired nearly 32,000 screeners by last week and is confident that the last of its contract employees will be gone by Nov. 19, Loy said. And if the agency gets its additional money and the authority to spend it fast enough, it also will satisfy the EDS checked-baggage screening deadline at well over 90% of airports. Some airports--no more than 30-35--will be late because of "lost time, lost budgets and very, very real engineering challenges." These airports include some of the largest, however, and they involve well over 10% of passenger volume.
Loy recommended that Congress authorize him or Mineta to extend the EDS screening deadline on an airport-by-airport basis, demanding in each case a plan and schedule to finish the job and an "interim mitigation strategy" for screening during the extension. Options for the latter include personnel-intensive trace detection systems, hand checks, dogs, and matching bags with passengers.
Support for sticking to the Dec. 31 deadline wasn't unanimous. John D. Rockefeller, 4th (D-W.Va.), chairman of the committee's aviation subcommittee, suggested that the TSA might give up too much by doing so. "I understand perfectly well that if you eliminate all dates, it sends a bad signal," he said. "I think it sends an even worse signal if we try to meet dates and do the job poorly."
Most committee members welcomed Loy's receptiveness to a "trusted traveler" program, by which frequent fliers would be able to subject themselves to criminal background checks and receive secure IDs that would speed them through airport security checks. But the ID is a key element of the concept, and the TSA currently is barred from work to develop a smart identification card for transportation workers, which Loy sees as the foundation for a trusted-traveler ID.
LOY SAID THE HOLD on the transportation-worker card came from Chairman Harold Rogers (R-Ky.) of the House Appropriations transportation subcommittee, who was concerned that TSA collaboration with the Defense Dept., which is developing a military ID, might leave the TSA card short of the functionality it needs for a trusted-traveler application. Loy said he is working with Rogers on how to proceed.
Surprising personnel estimates, fudging on deadlines, hostility to trusted travelers and a seeming lack of concern for customer service were emblematic of what Congress didn't like about Magaw. The Senate Appropriations Committee made clear its dissatisfaction late in July, not long after the administration bounced Magaw and installed Loy.
In its report on the Fiscal 2003 transportation appropriations bill, the committee complained about the TSA's "arrogance and disregard of the public's views." It said it wasn't satisfied with the way the agency had communicated with it and the public, and it complained that it had "struggled" to understand the TSA's poorly drawn budget proposals.
Extending an olive branch, Loy told the Commerce Committee his aim was to "pull on the same harness together rather than what has appeared to have been an unfortunate set of exchanges that don't get us anywhere."
Questioned by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Loy acknowledged that the Boeing Co. is behind schedule in its site assessments for airport baggage-screening installations. "Then look at somebody else to do it," McCain said. "Boeing has had their chance." "I will do that, sir," Loy replied.
Performance metrics from the first airports with federal workers make clear that screeners are getting better. "The evidence is overwhelming," Loy said, "that if you spend 100 hr. training a screener to do their job well, including the attitudinal end of what they do, as opposed to the five or six hours that was the average in the past, you will get an increasingly professional product on the job."
