Norton Presses for Tri-Committee Hearing to Compel Government-Wide Security Standards (3/17/2010)
Norton Presses for Tri-Committee Hearing to Compel Government-Wide Security Standards and Practices to Protect Federal Workers
March 17, 2010
WASHINGTON, D.C. - At a hearing held yesterday on the recent attacks on the Pentagon in Virginia and the IRS building in Texas, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said that it was time for the three committees with jurisdiction over homeland security, federal buildings, and the Federal Protective Service (FPS) to get together to insist that holes long identified in security for federal buildings be closed. Congressman Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.), chair, the Subcommittee on Federal Workers, Postal Service, and D.C. agreed that hearings on federal employee workplace security by his subcommittee, together with the Economic Development, Emergency Management and Public Buildings Subcommittee and the Homeland Security Committee, all committees on which Norton serves, are necessary to get to the bottom of the FPS standards and practices.
Under questioning, the General Accounting Office (GAO) confirmed that the FPS is no longer police-based, but is inspector-based, and that the FPS has all but eliminated proactive FPS patrols to detect and prevent violations. The GAO also testified that non-FPS guards cannot leave their posts for fear of liability, not even to chase suspected criminals or to assist other FPS officers. Most worrisome, Norton said, is the growth of separate contract police forces secured separately by federal agencies often unaccountable to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and FPS rules and standards or to central homeland security coordination that ensures at least a floor for security in federal agencies. Testimony documented an 18.4 percent reduction in the FPS while contract services government-wide rose 56.5 percent.
In response to Norton's questions about reduction in patrols and reduced hours of FPS employees because of dwindling numbers, Gary Schenkel, director, FPS, testified that they depend on local police forces. However, a GAO official Mark Goldstein, director, Physical Infrastructure Issues, said there was no Memorandum of Understanding with local police forces, and in many cases local armed police officers cannot enter federal buildings to assist FPS.
Norton's Subcommittee on Economic Development, Emergency Management, and Public Buildings will be holding a hearing on examining the role the interagency security committees of lay people in federal agencies play in setting building security standards that many believe require FPS experience.