By Calvin Biesecker
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) now estimates that cost of using private screeners at airports is only 3 percent more than what it costs to use federal screeners, far less than the agency estimated four years ago although it still needs to improve how it does its cost estimating, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
An estimate done by the TSA in 2007 of the cost of using private screeners at airports in the United States under the Screening Partnership Program (SPP) was 17 percent higher than that of using agency screeners, GAO says in March 4 letter to Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
In a report two years ago concerning the TSA’s earlier cost estimates of the SPP program, GAO said the agency had underestimated the costs of using federal screeners for a number of reasons, such as “costs associate with passenger and baggage screening services” at non-SPP airports, workers compensation and liability insurance and certain retirement benefits. The report also said that TSA didn’t account for the tax revenue the government received through private screening contractors.
“The omission of these factors reduced the reliability of TSA’s 2009 cost estimate by increasing the costs for private-contractor screeners relative to federal screeners,” GAO says in its letter to Mica, who released the letter yesterday.
The letter says that TSA has generally addressed three of GAO’s seven recommendations made in the 2009 report to improve cost estimating and has partially addressed the remaining ones.
Mica, a staunch proponent of the SPP program, slammed the TSA over the latest GAO finding.
“In essence, TSA cooked the books to try to eliminate the federal-private screening program,” the congressman said in a statement yesterday in which he released the GAO letter. “GAO found that TSA ignored critical data relating to costs. In fact, according to TSA’s own revised cost study, the cost differential between the two screening models is closer to three percent, likely within the margin of error.”
Mica also said other costs aren’t being accounted for, such as those associated with TSA’s “high attrition rate” and its “bloated and unnecessary bureaucratic overhead.”
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is currently investigating why five airports have been denied participating in the SPP. Ultimately, he believes that the investigation will prove that the SPP model is less expensive that using federal screeners.
In January, TSA Administrator John Pistole decided against expanding the SPP program beyond the 16 participating airports, saying there are no obvious benefits from doing so (Defense Daily, Feb. 1).
Airports have the option not to use federal screeners and instead contract with private screening companies, although few have chosen to do so.