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Friday, March 26, 2004

Airport directors are upset with the Transportation Security Administration's inability to adjust staffing to meet demand, which results in long waits at some airports, said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House aviation subcommittee.

He said he had met with more than a dozen airport directors from around the country.

Some large airports, such as those in Orlando, Fla., and Los Angeles, have only 80 percent of the screeners they need, while some small airports have far too many.

"It appears it's almost impossible for the TSA to micromanage staff and deal with schedule changes and fluctuations in traffic at all 429 [commercial] airports," Mica said.

Congress created the TSA after the Sept. 11 attacks and ordered it to replace the privately employed screeners with a better-paid, better-trained federal work force. But lawmakers also gave airports the option of returning to private screeners on Nov. 19, three years after President Bush signed the bill into law.

Mica said he expected more than 100 would take that option this fall, Mica said.

Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the aviation subcommittee, blamed understaffing for the long lines at some airports. The TSA initially believed it needed 59,000 screeners, but Congress set the number of full-time employees at 45,000, he said.

The system could work if the TSA gave its airport security directors more authority to hire and train workers, he said.

"This administration, as in all other things, wants to drive this back to the private sector, and we all remember how absolutely disastrous that was under the old model of minimum wage, high turnover," DeFazio said.

The TSA did not immediately return telephone calls seeking comment.

To gauge how well federal screeners were doing, Congress ordered five commercial airports to use privately employed screeners who are hired, trained, paid and tested to TSA standards. Those airports are in San Francisco; Rochester, N.Y.; Tupelo, Miss.; Jackson, Wyo.; and Kansas City, Mo. A report comparing the performance of both kinds of screeners is due next month.

John Martin, airport director at San Francisco International Airport, said screeners were hired and trained more quickly there than at airports with government screeners.

"Bottom line: we don't have long lines at San Francisco," he said.

Even airports without shortages want private screeners.

John Clark, executive director of the Jacksonville Airport Authority in Florida, said the TSA had 246 screeners and as many as 30 managers, far more than the airport needs. About 2 million people fly in and out of Jacksonville every year.

"We want to opt out," Clark said.

© 2003 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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