CLAYTON COUNTY, Ga — One Atlanta city councilman wants to conduct a study to see if prioritizing TSA could prevent long airport security lines during a government shutdown.
During March, security lines often stretched for hours, wrapping around baggage claim and even outside. Unpaid TSA workers called out sick, causing a security logjam at the world’s busiest airport.
“It gets very frustrating,” Atlanta City Councilman Byron Amos said.
The problems are not new for the Airport. Long lines became a common sight during the long government shutdown last year. So now, Amos says he wants to study whether privatizing TSA could prevent those problems from happening again.
“Being a former member of the security team at Hartsfield Jackson, I’m uniquely qualified to say, hey, we need to do something different,” Amos said. “Let’s look at it, then let’s see what it will cost, and finally let’s examine the pros and cons to get it done,”
TSA security screening can be privatized through the Screening Partnership Program. Last month, San Francisco’s airport tweeted that it was not experiencing long lines, in part because of its privatized system.
But union officials warn that privatizing could cause more problems than it solves. George Borek, a TSA union steward, said that shifting to a private workforce would create issues ranging from training to liability, especially given the size and complexity of Hartsfield-Jackson.
“That’s not solving the problem. That becomes a greater problem,” Borek said, adding that the real solution is for Congress to provide stable, long-term funding for TSA employees.
Borek also raised safety and liability concerns and questioned whether the city would need to assume the increased accountability.
Amos, though, pointed out that private company groups hired for the service must be approved by the TSA to meet their standards.
“TSA is still in control of the overall security of the airports. So the standards are the standards,” Amos said.
For Borek, the answer to the security line shutdown problem lies in how TSA is funded. He says Congress should approve longer funding periods for TSA so they are not affected by shutdowns.
“The solution is not privatizing. The solution is addressing the problem. The problem is funding,” Borek said.
Amos says something needs to change.
”There are a lot of little things that need to change. Either we need to go to private security at Atlanta-Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, or the government needs to figure out how to make our TSA insulated away from these things,” Amos said.
The councilman says he will file legislation to launch the feasibility study in the coming weeks. The study would identify how much the city would need to pay for the service and the potential challenges of switching from TSA to a private company.
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