So You Want To Federalize Airport Security?

Toogood Reports ^ | November 6, 2001 | Matt Barr

[Starmaker]

On Saturday night, Subash Gurung was a ticketed passenger on a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Omaha who had two folding knives confiscated from his pocket at a security checkpoint at O'Hare. Naturally, he was allowed to proceed to the boarding area, without the two knives. (That was close!) Just before boarding the plane, his carry-on baggage – which had passed through the baggage screening X-ray machine at the same checkpoint where the two knives were confiscated – was, happily, randomly searched at the gate. Therein, five more knives, a Taser stun gun and a can of mace were found. Airline employees barred him from the flight, and he was subsequently arrested.

Gurung was charged with three misdemeanors, unlawful use of a weapon, attempting to board an aircraft with a weapon and carrying a dangerous weapon. They then released him from custody, you'll be happy to know if you're a civil libertarian, partly because he couldn't be charged with a federal crime, having not actually boarded the plane. Gurung was questioned by the FBI, but was released by the local police on bond Sunday morning. Later, he was detained for an immigration violation, which is exceedingly good news if you're on board with the war against terror, and all that. (Did I mention the address Gurung listed as his home address was also the home address of Ayub Ali Khan, who was taken into federal custody September 12 with box cutters in his possession on an Amtrak train, who had been airborne September 11 before the FAA grounded all the planes and diverted his flight to St. Louis, and who is still being held as a material witness in the September 11 investigation?)

Seven O'Hare security workers have been fired for letting Gurung get as far as he did. Even the most cynical critic of current airport security procedure doesn´t believe it´s a systemic problem when someone, a month and a half after September 11, is caught trying to carry two folding knives onto a plane, and isn´t detained, or at the very least searched more carefully thereafter before leaving the security checkpoint. Evidently, "human error" was at work.

Critics of industry-lobby-laden, corporate-welfare-loving Republicans in Congress and in the White House, most visibly Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., see this incident as proof positive that we ought to make baggage screeners federal employees. "You can't do it on the cheap," Durbin said in the Chicago Sun-Times. We don't doubt that you can't, Senator, but that's another column.

The seven security workers, which include a supervisor, were employees of Atlanta-based Argenbright Security, Inc., which had a bad year in 2000, highlighted by a $1 million fine (plus costs and reimbursement to airlines) and three years' probation for falsifying records, doing inadequate background checks on applicants and hiring more than a dozen workers at Philadelphia International airport between 1995 and 1998 who had criminal convictions for burglary, aggravated assault, firearms possession and other crimes. The company provides security services in a number of major airports.

Argenbright, in kind with most airport security contractors, routinely pays its baggage screeners and other security personnel in the neighborhood of $6.00 an hour, and has a turnover rate of anywhere from 100-400%. We take it that's what Sen. Durbin was referring to. That part we get. What is unclear is how it follows that the federal government ought to sign their (increased, we assume) paychecks.

You can blame the Democrats for the current state of federal civil service, if you have a very long memory and are so inclined: it was President Jackson, Democrat from South Carolina, as we're all aware from high school social studies, who perfected the "spoils system" of political appointments. By the late 19th century, thanks to the spoils system, a vigorous movement to reform federal employment standards was afoot. It seems too many competent civil servants were being let go when the new boss came to town; to fix that, a competitive application and merit promotion/retention program evolved.

Three forces separately contributed to the evolution of the system into something a little less recognizable: the Kennedy administration issued an executive order recognizing federal employee unions, which accumulated power, bargaining and otherwise, apace; in the 1960s and 70s, the civil rights movement fixed scrutiny on the "disparate impact" of merit-based federal jobs and promotions, to wit, the lack of minority representation on the civil service rolls; the Whistleblower Act of 1989 was enacted to protect federal employees from retaliatory dismissal when they exposed corruption and wrongdoing in their corners of the world. More generally, the courts, loath as late as 1971 (Griggs v. Duke Power) to involve themselves in matters of civil service, developed, as courts have been wont to do since then, a "property rights" theory of a federal employee in his job, and have been keen on hearing lawsuits and appeals over examination results and promotion and compensation issues. When you want to keep something nice and simple, get the lawyers involved, and see what the Due Process Clause might have to say about it.

Space and the author's expertise limit the above discussion of causes, but suffice it to say that what started out in the days of the Pendleton Act as an effort to recruit, hire, retain and reward the best and brightest in federal civil service has become a means by which to entrench even the most unaccountably bad employees. Aggrieved federal workers, that is to say, ones which don't do their job and receive negative appraisals, may take their case to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MPSB), file a grievance with their union, file an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint, or even bring their case to the Office of the Special Counsel, if they can manage to allege that they're being harassed for being whistle-blowers. Doing any of these things routinely buys you a year or more before the axe falls, if it ever does (i.e., on the off chance you lose). Failing all that, they can simply sue their manager.

Blue-ribbon commissions, Washington Post investigative reports and even the Office of Personnel Management itself have concluded that public managers, faced with literally year-long or more crusades to rid themselves of the indolent and incompetent, simply don't try. The attention which would need to be paid to eliminating one bad apple would take away from the actual doing of their jobs. Instead, they often seek to "quarantine" the no-accounts, isolating them from their coworkers' projects and personal space. They place non-performers in make-work or low-responsibility projects called "turkey farms," and try and think of ways to explain to their best worker that the no-account just got the same raise she did, or may someday be her boss.

This is the culture and procedure a unanimous Senate and a healthy chunk of the House would like to bring to airport security. With proper federal oversight -- and oversight is proper, this being a matter of public safety -- security firms which falsify records, hire felons and allow passengers with a carry-on arsenal past baggage screening would lose their contracts, and have no recourse, real or contrived, to the EEOC. Should we instead brace ourselves for a future where you can´t fire the people who do these things, and thereby incent their employers to police themselves, without interminable hearings and investigations?

All concerned will see an object lesson in Subash Gurung's case that more needs to be done to tighten airport security. That does not mean, ipso facto, that the federal government ought to take over. In fact, it may, to the surprise of almost no one, make it far worse. A year from now, when the O´Hare Seven are federal civil servants, they´ll be on the job the very next day, screening you and your fellow passengers on the next flight to Omaha.

Here's hoping the Senate doesn't see Subash Gurung as proof they've got it right on this issue, like Dick Durbin does, but instead, sees a reason to believe they've got it wrong.

[Angelique]

How anyone who is for a "Free Republic" can also be for more centralized government is beyond me.

Isn't it strange that our government was allowed to strip our military during the Clinton administration when its foremost duty was to protect our shores? The thought of having these thugs still in power..the Senate, to make any decisions for us is beyond comprehension. Hopefully, the House will prevail.