Friday, May 8, 2009

Airport officials, pilots fume at new TSA security plan

Government wants tighter regulations for pilots, employees


By PAT MURPHY
Express Staff Writer

Frustration and anger boiled over Tuesday night at the Friedman Memorial Airport Authority's monthly meeting after a Transportation Security Administration officer explained the need for broad new rules investigating and regulating pilots to comply with tougher new anti-terrorism airport security measures.

Along with all major U.S. airports, Friedman Memorial is being required to subject all regular tenants and employees of the airport to fingerprinting and background investigations. They would need new security badges every two years.

Airport Manager Rick Baird told board members that compliance costs to the airport have soared, calling the plan an unfunded mandate by the TSA. He said fellow airport managers across the country would prefer the TSA, a division of the federal Office of Homeland Security, transfer some of its budget to local airports to cover expenses of compliance.

He told the board that Friedman security director Steve Guthrie no longer has time for other duties. His security functions have now become full time, and a new employee will need to be hired to cover other administrative activities.

"TSA needs to understand it's forcing us to do something we don't have the assets for," Baird said.

In an interview after the meeting, Guthrie said he issues some 750 badges at the airport. Recipients are charged $50 per year, which Baird said does not cover the costs of airport security operations.

Baird said a tougher and more complex security requirement would also require the airport to spend $20,000 on a new automated online training program.

Catching the full brunt of objections to the new TSA program, known in the airport industry as O8F, was TSA regional inspector John Paul Hazen, of Boise, who checks airports for compliance but has no authority on policy making.

"Onerous," asserted Jim Perkins, president of the Blaine County Pilots Association, of the new measures. "It's an invasion of our privacy," he said, citing the fingerprinting and background checks of pilots who've been using Friedman for decades.

Mike Rasch, general manager of Atlantic Aviation, the airport's only private service center, complained to Hazen: "We're talking about a directive (the TSA security regulation) we haven't even read."

Hazen explained that because "aviation is still the No. 1 target" of terrorists, the plan was implemented on a hurried basis.

Clearly annoyed, board member Tom Bowman, a Blaine County commissioner, complained that TSA brass seem to be indifferent to "local governments just trying to make their budgets," adding that TSA officials "never sat on a city council." Bowman told Hazen to "pass along my frustration up the line."

Two categories of clearances are in place at Friedman. The Aircraft Operations Area badge is required for all airport personnel and pilots for entrance through the field's fence, except the air carrier ramps. That area requires a Secure Identification Display Area (SIDA) badge.




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