All their disads are non-unique – a Privatization’s inevitable internationally
ac – at: airports say no – puerto rico
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2ac – at: airports say no – puerto rico Puerto Rico’s modeled Kanige 12 – staff writer at the Deal Pipeline (Jeffrey Kanige, 6/22/12, “Ahead of the News,” The Deal, L.L.C., Lexis)//twemchen Full report Puerto Rico airport deal seen as privatization bellwether This summer Puerto Rico will have a chance to make history. Authorities hope to award a multi-million dollar, public-private partnership contract for the Luis Muñoz Marin International Airport to one of two final bidders. If all goes well, it will be the first U.S. airport to be fully privatized and the first of its kind under a Federal Aviation Administration pilot program. It will have succeeded where Chicago's Midway International Airport failed. Caught by the downdraft of the financial crisis, Chicago cancelled a $2.5 billion concession to an investor group led by Citigroup Inc.'s Citi Infrastructure. Puerto Rico's procurement appears headed for a much better landing than Chicago's airport deal. Capital markets are stronger this time around, for one thing. Industry sources say banks view airports as good loan assets, in part because of their scarcity, and are lining up for financing commitments to support the offers. And there is general optimism that a successful deal in Peurto Rico would reignite interest in similar mid- to large-sized privatizations of U.S. airports. Over the past 12 to 18 months privatizations have advanced in a number of states. Virginia and Ohio, for instance, both established new offices within transport agencies with direct mandate from the states' governors to undertake specific projects. "If Puerto Rico completes the deal, it could start a wave of similar, mid- to large-sized airports, and that would be a sea change," says Robert Poole, a transportation director at Reason Foundation who has studied airport privatizations globally. 2ac – at: airports say no – at: liability This just isn’t a thing Garrett 10 – staff writer at Airport Improvement Magazine (Ronnie L. Garrett, March-April 2010, “Airports Across the Nation Make Passenger Screening a Private Matter,” http://www.airportimprovement.com/content/story.php?article=00157)//twemchen Liability concerns prevent many airports from using contract screeners. "Airport operations are concerned if something happens and someone got through with a device, they would be sued into non-existence, but that's simply not true," says VanLoh. Because TSA contracts with the screening companies, provides oversight for their programs and places FSDs in the airport to monitor their effectiveness, the TSA is "of the opinion that airport operators ... should not face liability for screening services, whether they are provided by TSA employees or companies under contract to TSA." TSA further clarifies this in Section 44920 of Title 49, United States Code, which states, "an operator of an airport shall not be liable for any claims for damages filed in state or federal court (including a claim for compensatory, punitive, contributory or indemnity damages)," whether the screeners are federal or private. According to McCarron, airport operators owe it to themselves to investigate the program. "If they think it might address their needs, they should explore it and see if it's a good fit," he says. "We saw this as a good opportunity to have the private sector develop some creative hiring practices and attract good candidates. And as far as we're concerned, the move has been very, very successful." Our ev cites the US Code Berrick 9 – Managing Director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues (Cathleen A. Berrick, 1/9/9, “Aviation Security: TSA’s Cost and Performance Study of Private-Sector Airport Screening,” http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0927r.pdf)//twemchen • However, 49 U.S.C. § 44920(g) provides that, notwithstanding any other provision of law, an operator of an airport shall not be liable for any claims for damages relating to an airport operator’s decision to submit or not submit an application to opt out of federal screening, or any acts of negligence, gross negligence, or intentional wrongdoing by a qualified private screening company or any of its employees while performing its duties under contract with TSA or by employees of the federal government providing passenger and property security screening services at an airport Government contractor defense solves Stone 4 – Admiral, Acting Administrator of the TSA (David Stone, 4/22/4, “ HOUSE COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE: SUBCOMMITTEE ON AVIATION HOLDS A HEARING ON AIRPORT SCREENER PRIVATIZATION,” Aviation Subcommittee, Lexis)//twemchen The liability and indemnification is an important question because no one wants to take on this responsibility if they are liable. I had a list of -- everything TSA does is now contracted to the private sector, isn't that true, almost everything? STONE: Well, we are... MICA: We now have -- the recruitment is done by NCS Pearson. Assessment and hiring of all screeners, private and federal, is done by NCS Pearson, a private contractor. The recruitment assessment, the hiring of personnel is done by Cooperative Personnel Services, a private contractor. The pre-employment physical testing is done by a private contractor. Boeing-Siemens does training for baggage screeners. Boeing-Siemens does studies of passenger improvement. Are they indemnified, these folks, now? STONE: I'd have to find out for each individual one and provide that back to you. MICA: OK. But, again, no one's going to take on this responsibility. You do have a current indemnification for these five pilot projects in some way, don't you? Could you describe that? STONE: We're currently working with DHS to provide coverage to the private screening contractors under the Safety Act, an act that was part of the Homeland Security Act. Consideration is being given to amending that Security Act regulation to designate and certify TSA's current standard operating procedures that are followed by TSA screeners and contractors at the privatized airports as an approved anti-terrorism technology. Doing so would provide the contractor with the judicially created affirmative defense known as the government contractor defense. That defense protects the contractor from third-party liability tort suits. That's our intent, is to review that as part of the... 2ac – at: airports say no – at: security not better Other reasons solve Falcus 14 – British Aviation Reporter (Matt Falcus, 8/8/14, “Airports consider switch to a privatized TSA,” http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/airports-consider-switch-to-a-privatized-tsa)//twemchen There are other reasons that airports choose to go private, including a sour relationship with the TSA, or the desire to employ locals. But rarely is the quality of security itself mentioned in deciding whether to switch; it seems that it is rarely any better or worse by doing so, and therefore is of little importance to decision-makers who don’t have strong opinions on the matter. 2ac – at: circumvention Congress got their back Edwards 13 – Director of Tax Policy Studies at Cato (Chris Edwards, 11/19/13, “Privatizing the Transportation Security Administration,” No. 742, Lexis)//twemchen The expansion of private screening is a threat to TSA bureaucracy. So it is not surprising that TSA has “a history of intimidating airport operators that express an interest in participating” in the SPP program.113 In 2011, TSA rejected applications from six airports to join the SPP program, and it appeared that the agency wanted to wind down the program altogether. But that TSA stance flew in the face of congressional intent. In response, Congress rebuked the agency and pushed through legislation in 2012 that strengthened the rights of airports wanting to use private screeners.114 Other airports are now submitting applications to TSA for SPP status. 2ac – at: circumvention – at: CTI report The conclusion of their ev says they won’t ban the program – our ev cites more recent TSA documentation Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 11 – Prepared for Chairman John L. Mica (CTI, 6/3/11, “Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Oversight and Investigations Staff Reform; TSA Ignores More Cost-Effective Screening Model,” http://www.aaae.org/?e=showFile&l=XQVIPZ)//twemchen Moreover, documentation obtained by Committee staff reveals that in late 2010 and early 2011, senior officials at TSA considered disregarding the statutory requirement for the SPP entirely by abolishing the program and federalizing the existing 16 SPP airports. 22 The agency instead chose to avoid public backlash by continuing the program at existing SPP airports but refusing any future applications. Curtailment will face stiff resistance Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 11 – Prepared for Chairman John L. Mica (CTI, 6/3/11, “Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Oversight and Investigations Staff Reform; TSA Ignores More Cost-Effective Screening Model,” http://www.aaae.org/?e=showFile&l=XQVIPZ)//twemchen An internal TSA power point presentation, dated January 5, 2011, outlined the following three options for SPP: 1. Award new contracts to the existing SPP airports and accept the requests of the five airports that had pending applications; 2. Award new contracts to the existing SPP airport and deny pending applications on the basis of keeping the program small for test purposes only; or 3. Award new contracts to SPP airports for one year and resume federalization efforts. 83 TSA officials recognized that “any effort to end or limit the SPP program based on cost will face stiff resistance.”84 Contract modifications solve their concerns Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure 11 – Prepared for Chairman John L. Mica (CTI, 6/3/11, “Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Oversight and Investigations Staff Reform; TSA Ignores More Cost-Effective Screening Model,” http://www.aaae.org/?e=showFile&l=XQVIPZ)//twemchen TSA officials identified five potential operational justifications to “limit the scope of the SPP program to the current airports”: • Administrative burden – disproportionate amount of resources are spent on SPP airports; • Intelligence – TSA can tailor and provide direct information to Federal employees; • Direct control – another layer is involved when FSDs order direction action • Flexibility and use of resources – TSA can use its own resources for emergency events, but cannot utilize SPP; and • Impact on workforce – TSOs at potential SPP airports face uncertainty about their job status, benefits, leave, and salary. 87 Committee staff discussed each of these justifications with SPP Program Office officials on March 22, 2011, during an in-person meeting. SPP officials informed staff that TSA is currently amending SPP contracts (not including potential impacts on the TSO workforce), and that these modifications will eliminate any existing challenges related to the above factors.88 ***TERRORISM 1ac – terrorism The TSA’s terrorism policy borders on criminal incompetence – this empirically guarantees vast security breaches that make terrorism inevitable – the private sector would provide a useful model, but burdensome surveillance impedes innovation Bandow 14 – senior fellow at CATO institute, specializing in foreign policy and civil liberties. Special assistant to Reagan, editor of the Inquiry Magazine, J.D. from Stanford (Doug Bandow, 1/10/14, “Privatize the TSA: Make Americans Safer by Letting Airports Handle Security,” http://www.cato.org/blog/privatize-tsa-make-americans-safer-letting-airports-handle-airport-security)//twemchen Any American who travels deals with the Transportation Safety Administration. The Bush administration made many mistakes in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks; creating a government monopoly to handle air transportation security was one of the worst. Government’s most important duty is protecting its citizens, but others can share that role. After all, no airport or airline wants a plane hijacking, and no airline (or railroad) passenger wants to die in a terrorist incident. Unfortunately, the TSA is a costly behemoth that is better at bureaucracy than safety. Created in 2001, the TSA spent $7.9 billion and employed 62,000 employees last year alone. The agency’s main job is to protect the more than 450 commercial airports, and two-thirds of the agency’s budget goes for airport screening. Unfortunately, as my Cato Institute colleague Chris Edwards has documented in a recent Policy Analysis, the TSA has lived down to expectations. Notes Edwards: “TSA has often made the news for its poor performance and for abusing the civil liberties of airline passengers. It has had a troubled workforce and has made numerous dubious investments.” For all the agency’s spending and effort, “TSA’s screening performance has been no better, and possibly worse, than the performance of the remaining private screeners at U.S. airports.” The TSA has had an abundance of problems, as I listed in a Freeman column: Wasteful spending of all sorts. “Unethical and possibly illegal activities,” according to the agency Inspector General. “Costly, counterintuitive, and poorly executed” operations, according to the House oversight committee. Employee misconduct. Ranking 232 out of 240 federal agencies in job satisfaction. Worst, though, is the TSA’s failure to do the job for which it was created: secure America’s airports and other transportation hubs. Reported Edwards, “There were 25,000 security breaches at U.S. airports during TSA’s first decade, despite the agency’s huge spending and all the inconveniences imposed on passengers.” In tests, the agency failed to catch as much as three-quarters of fake explosives. The problem is not just operational inefficiency. The TSA doesn’t think strategically, or at least, it does not do so effectively. The agency has been criticized for failing to follow “robust risk assessment methodology” and undertaking “little or no evaluation of” program performance. No planes have been hijacked since 9/11, but, wrote Edwards, “The safety of travelers in recent years may have more to do with the dearth of terrorists in the United States and other security layers around aviation, than with the performance of TSA airport screeners.” The alternative to the TSA monopoly is privatization. Entrust airport security to airports, which can integrate screening with other aspects of facility security and adjust to local circumstances. It’s not a leap into the unknown; Canadian and most European airports use private screening. Even the 2001 legislation setting up the TSA allowed a small out for American airports. Five were allowed to go private, and another 11 have chosen to do so in the intervening 12 years. However, the Reason Foundation’s Robert Poole complained that the TSA “micromanages” even private operations, “thereby making it very difficult for screening companies to innovate.” Worse, a House oversight committee charged the agency with “a history of intimidating airport operators that express an interest in” effectively firing the TSA. Shifting security to private operators would not eliminate problems. But expanding airport flexibility and more important, creating security competition would encourage increased experimentation. Americans started to innovate on that tragic September day a dozen years ago. When passengers on the fourth hijacked flight learned what their hijackers had in store, the former ended the mission. Passengers later took down the shoe and underwear bombers. Obviously, dangers remain. But the best way to protect people would be to end the TSA, limiting Washington to general oversight and tasks such as intelligence activities. Travel would be safer, security would be cheaper, and Americans would be freer. Three internal links – a) Hiring and regulatory flexibility – decentralization allows robust quality control over private contractors – which creates a race to the top in security performance Edwards 13 – Director of Tax Policy Studies at Cato (Chris Edwards, 11/19/13, “Privatizing the Transportation Security Administration,” No. 742, Lexis)//twemchen Under the SPP program, private screeners must follow rules similar to those of government screeners. TSA picks the screening contractors, pays the contractors, and imposes TSA screening protocols. But that structure reduces the possible cost savings and performance improvements that the private sector could bring. Poole notes that TSA “micromanages” screening under the SPP, “spell[ing] out procedures and technology (inputs) rather than only specifying the desired outcomes of screening, thereby making it very difficult for screening companies to innovate.”127 Reforms should allow airports to hire screening companies of their choosing and pay for those services with charges on airport users. If a security company did not achieve the high-quality screening results for which it was contracted, then it could be fired. One of the problems with the near-monopoly TSA is that individual airports have not been allowed to “fire” the screener because it is the federal government. The SPP program has started to change that, but much larger reforms are needed. Poole argues that moving the responsibility for screening from TSA to the airports would allow airports to create a more integrated and effective security system because airports are already responsible for general airport security. 128 Such integration would allow the staff to be cross-trained among security functions at airports, for example, which would improve morale and enhance skills. Some policymakers favor expanding private screening to all commercial airports and shrinking TSA’s role in aviation security to include only analyzing intelligence, setting security standards, and auditing screening operations.129 Representative Mica is pushing for privatized airport screening and thinks that TSA should be downsized to about 5,000 workers.130 Sen. Rand Paul (RKY) has proposed fully privatizing TSA, as has Cato Institute scholar Jim Harper.131 b) The best studies prove our argument Edwards 13 – Director of Tax Policy Studies at Cato (Chris Edwards, 11/19/13, “Privatizing the Transportation Security Administration,” No. 742, Lexis)//twemchen The existence of the SPP program has allowed researchers to compare the performance of TSA screeners to private screeners for such skills as spotting guns in X-ray machines. A 2004 study by the DHS Inspector General found that federal and private screeners performed equally poorly.115 The same year, a study by a consulting firm for TSA found that the U.S. airports with private screeners performed as good or better on screening as airports with TSA screeners.116 In 2005, the GAO found that private screeners did a better job than TSA screeners.117 Also in 2005, the DHS Inspector General concluded: “The ability of TSA screeners to stop prohibited items from being carried through the sterile areas of the airports fared no better than the performance of screeners prior to September 11, 2001.”118 A 2007 study by a consulting firm for TSA found that “private screeners performed at a level that was equal to or greater than that of federal [screeners].”119 A 2007 USA Today investigation found that the private screeners at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) had far better detection abilities than the federal screeners at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).120 A 2008 TSA report compared screening at six SPP airports to screening at six non-SPP airports and found performance to be similar.121 A 2012 study by the GAO compared all 16 SPP airports with non-SPP airports on four different performance measures.122 It found that some SPP airports performed slightly better than non-SPP airports on some measures, and performed slightly worse on other measures. The bottom line is that after a decade of experience, it appears that the overall performance of privatized screening is at least as good as, if not better than, government screening. There are other advantages to private screening, as reported by the GAO in a 2012 survey of 34 airport operators regarding the SPP program.123 One advantage is the opportunity to improve customer service, which is important to airports in order to stay competitive with other modes of travel. Another advantage of private screening is increased staffing flexibility. Under the current TSA system, airports need to get approval from Washington to adjust the number of screeners as demands fluctuate, and those approvals have often taken extended periods of time. The number of passengers at particular airports can be subject to substantial fluctuations; thus, local control over workforce decisions makes more sense than the current centralized system. c) Streamlining – the plan redirects resources – making counter-terror more effective Edwards 13 – Director of Tax Policy Studies at Cato (Chris Edwards, 11/19/13, “Privatizing the Transportation Security Administration,” No. 742, Lexis)//twemchen Management problems stemming from TSA’s large screening workforce distract the agency from its core responsibilities in avia-tion security. A House report argued that “due to high attrition, TSA has spent so much time managing itself that it has been unable to focus necessary resources on oversight and regulation of U.S. transportation security in general.”33 Another House report described the agency as “an enormous, inflexible and distracted bureaucracy,” that has “lost its focus on transportation security.”34 The solution is to get TSA out of the screening business and devolve that responsibility to the nation’s airports. Centralized management of 53,000 screeners at more than 450 separate airports across the nation makes no sense. All airports have their unique variations in passenger levels, for example, and need to continually adjust their workforces, but TSA is slow in making needed changes. That is one reason numerous airports are interested in returning to private screening, as discussed below. 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