TSA 'Cooked the Books' in Report About Replacement Private Screeners

March 11, 2011 at 3:57 PM | by Omri | Comments (0)

We've now written a couple of times about the debate over private airport security screeners replacing TSA workers. To catch you up: when Congress originally created the TSA they specifically wrote in the option for private companies who would live up to TSA regulations, but who would also be subject to the complaints and constraints of the marketplace.

The idea was that you don't want a government bureaucracy - especially one that might end up unionized - having absolute power over the American flying public. They might do things like grope women and laugh about it, for instance.

Since then TSA has been trying to do an end-run around Congress's original legislation, effectively trying to prevent TSA stations from getting replaced. First the agency dragged its feet on approving private bids, and most recently the TSA director declared that he was just flat refusing to accept any new applications. Congress responded by reminding the agency who gets to make laws and by demanding answers, asking among other things the equivalent of "why shouldn't you be replaced by private screeners?"

One answer TSA came up with was "because private screeners are 17% more expensive than TSA screeners." Turns out that was not quite true, and it wasn't true because TSA made it up:

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said TSA�s new estimates show that private screeners are just 3 percent more expensive than federal workers - not 17 percent, as the agency previously had stated. Auditors said that earlier TSA estimates had not accounted for the costs of workers compensation, liability insurance, retirement benefits and administrative overhead involved in using federal employees...

Mr. Mica said the revised 3 percent cost difference is likely still too high because it does not take into account "the full cost of TSA�s bloated and unnecessary bureaucratic overhead."

TSA officials are developing a pretty bad habit of fibbing to the public to cover their own bureaucratic hides. Whether it's covering up the damage from their security screw-ups or denying that full-body scanners can save images or being argumentatively dishonest about unionization, it increasingly seems like they'll say and do anything to undercut airline security debates.

It's not exactly what you want from an organization supposed to restore the public's trust in flying, but at least they're also asking us to pay more airline fees to them.

[Photo: TSA]

Related Stories:
· Watchdog: TSA �cooked� data on airport security [Washington Times]
· Airline Security [Jaunted]
· Airports [Jaunted]

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