The public loves the plan—their evidence cites a vocal majority

The public loves the plan—their evidence cites a vocal majority

COMMUNITY OPINION Before approaching the county, Smith said he conducted a poll to determine community interest and support for the project. “I wanted to make sure the majority of people were in favor of this,” he said. “If they’re not, it’s a waste of time.” In a poll of 531 registered voters, Smith said roughly 80 percent favored privatization with commercial service. Later polls reportedly yielded similar results. According to Smith, a poll of 1,050 people showed 85 percent of respondents favored privatization with commercial service and a poll of just Lawrenceville residents showed 70 percent of poll participants favored the plan. “This is a way to take this airport and turn it into a small origin and destination airport,” Smith said. The plan includes a maximum of 10 gates with up to an additional 80 flights a day, or an increase from the current 14 flights each hour to 18 per hour. Smith said the problem he currently faces is that those opposed are protesting while those in favor have remained silent. “I think it would have gone a lot smoother if people understood what it was,” he said.

If it turns out to be true, President Obama’s decision to end the National Security Agency’s metadata storage program is absolutely a lateral move, both politically and practically. Politically, it scores him some points on his left flank while disarming libertarian cranks like Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). Meanwhile, the high-fives being tossed around among the pro-Snowden crowd in reaction to the trial balloon only manages to underscore the emerging pro-corporation libertarianism of that clique. Yesterday, an unnamed source close to the administration told The New York Times that the president plans to ask Congress to pass legislation that would shut down NSA’s phone metadata storage program, authorized under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, and, instead, force the telecoms to retain the metadata from which NSA could continue to access information about targets. In other words, the Section 215 program is being privatized. And this is somehow good news.

Based on the foregoing assessment, the following two recommendations would improve U.S. airport screening. The most urgent one is to further reform the current SPP. Recent legislation that puts the burden of proof on TSA in denying an airport’s request to opt out of TSA provided screening is a modest step in the right direction, given that ATSA allows all airports to opt out via SPP. But what still needs correcting is TSA’s overly centralized approach. SPP should be further reformed so that: Q The airport, not TSA, selects the contractor, choosing the best-value proposal from TSA-certified contractors. Q The airport, not TSA, manages the contract, under TSA’s regulatory oversight of all security activities at the airport in question. These changes could be made by directing TSA to adopt them as policy changes, without the need to revise the actual language of the ATSA legislation.

Madam Secretary, TSA proposes to remove the statutory cap on airline security fees so it can raise them without Congress acting. As an initial increase, TSA would lift airline security fees by 60 percent to raise more than $1 billion annually. I understand that TSA needs substantial funding to address very real air security threats, but that is quite a large increase.

The issues that Congress has raised about the Total Information Awareness research program and stopped funding for. And very important that the privacy questions haven't been asked, but I think that's a research program. What we have are ongoing programs of data mining and data collection, FBI, TSA and so forth, without Congress coming together and exercising significant sufficient oversight over -- under what guideline circumstances standards are doing it, and please would you please make those public so we can discuss them.

I repeat that this extensive cross-subsidy of smaller airports is not news, nor is it an “unintended consequence.” Congress designed the grant system to do just this—it’s a feature, not a bug. So rather than wasting political capital trying to shift more of AIP to larger airports, in my view a far better approach would be to take passenger airports out of the grant system altogether. Commercial airports are not some kind of “infant industry” needing government support; they are businesses that can and should be self-supporting.

Privatized Screening Also at the hearing, Pistole received a barrage of concerns over some of his recent and controversial decisions to halt an airport security screening privatization program at 16 airports as well as to allow Transportation Security Officers limited collective bargaining rights.

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about a bipartisan "Gang of Six" U.S. Senators leading the compromise toward an agreement on the budget deal. There's another bipartisan gang of six making serious moves on Capitol Hill, this one consisting of six members of the U.S. House of Representatives all in agreement that reforming the TSA is urgent. On April 8, 2011, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D. MS) introduced the "Aviation Security Stakeholder Participation Act of 2011" (H.R.1447) to direct the TSA to establish an Aviation Security Advisory Committee. The Aviation Security Advisory Committee would include experts from a variety of groups in the avation industry including unions members in the travel industry, airport operators, and several others. In addition, Working Groups would be established from within the Advisory Committee for air cargo security, perimeter security, and general aviation security. On April 14, Rep. Nita Lowey, (D-NY) introduced legislation (H.R. 1554) that would prohibit advance notice to certain individuals, including security screeners of covert testing of security screening at airports. The Bill is co-sponsored by Democrats Bennie G. Thompson and Sheila Jackson-Lee from Texas. Both proposed bills were then referred to the House Committee on Homeland Security which has sole jurisdiction over all TSA security matters. On April 15, three powerful Republican Congressmen added their own proposed bill, known as the "Security Enhancement and Jobs Act of 2011" to expand the Screening Partnership Program which allows airport operators to replace TSA screeners with private screening companies operating under federal supervision and guidelines.

While these measures share some obvious characteristics — they all enjoy strong bipartisan support and would affect vulnerable populations — they also hint at a broader trend. After an extended period of dysfunction on Capitol Hill, weary lawmakers and administration officials are eager to show a disaffected electorate that they can make modest changes to the way government functions. There are plenty of signs that President Obama and congressional Republicans remain on a collision course — this week, over energy and possibly immigration. So it is not clear that the successful passage of these bills would spill over into more-contentious parts of the legislative arena, such as trade and tax reform. But, at least for the moment, there are some very concrete results. “This is the beginning of green shoots,” said Rich Gold, who heads Holland & Knight’s public policy practice and represents the coalition backing the Sunscreen Innovation Act. “What you’re seeing with these bills is that, even with the general gap yawning between the two parties, there’s a beginning vision of what the government should be doing going forward.” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is spearheading an effort to pass as many bills as possible that have already cleared the House and have at least had hearings in the Senate. While they deal with a range of topics — from using foreign visa fees to promote U.S. tourism abroad to collecting taxes on Internet sales — she said they all reflect compromise and could make it easier to strike broader deals in the next congressional session. “For the institution, Congress, it’s important to get the grease in the wheels again,” Klobuchar said in an interview. “Even if we don’t pass all of them, going into the first six months it is going to make people feel better about the work they do, and it’s going let the public see things can get done.”

Mr. Cravaack. Yeah, I know it. It is a bipartisan issue. We have worked on a lot of different issues regarding transportation as well. The big thing I think we want to make sure that we have public is that there is a beneficial cost associated with the privatized, if there is one; and, No. 2, that we have an effective system that you are able to manage.

What’s ACI-NA’s stance on privatization? ACI’s position has always been if an airport wants to privatize, it should be allowed to, and if it doesn’t want to it shouldn’t have to. When I arrived at ACI-NA, the intellectual momentum in the U.S. industry was going in the direction of privatization. Now that intellectual momentum has stopped. There are still people interested in it as a concept. But if you look around the world, a growing number of airports are run on some kind of private concession and a more business-like model.

First was news that Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is dating Shelley Rubino, an airline lobbyist. Consumer advocates claim the relationship has influenced Shuster’s committee, including the adoption of a bill called the Transparent Airfares Act.