By Calvin Biesecker
Senate Appropriators have agreed to fully fund the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) FY ’11 budget request for surface transportation security but are fencing $50 million in funds elsewhere in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) pending the submittal of a comprehensive risk assessment and national security strategy for the railroad sector.
The funds are being withheld from the DHS headquarters Office of the Secretary and Executive Management.
The strategy sought by the Senate Appropriations Committee must include “a detailed timeline for meeting all remaining congressional requirements for surface transportation security included in the 9/11 Act, and a comprehensive plan on how the department will meet the recommendations outlined in the Surface Transportation Security Priority Assessment by the National Security Council,” according to the committee’s report accompanying their version of the FY ’11 DHS spending bill.
The Surface Transportation Security Priority Assessment was released by the White House in March and contains 20 recommendations aimed at creating a comprehensive framework to improve transportation security and identify areas of focus. For example, the recommendations include things like identify methodologies to evaluate and rank surface transportation systems and infrastructure that are critical and implement a multi-year grants program for surface transportation security.
The committee says that such a report from DHS on surface transportation security is “long overdue.”
As part of the report to Congress, the Senate Appropriators want the supporting documents to show how risk assessments are used in divvying resources across, and within, all transportation modes as part of the FY ’12 budget request that the Obama administration will submit in February 2011.
TSA is seeking $137.6 million for surface transportation security in FY ’11, with $39.9 million slotted for staffing and operations, and $97.6 million for inspectors and canines. The funding includes annualization of 15 Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response teams (VIPR) and 100 additional surface transportation security inspectors that were included in the FY ’10 budget.
The VIPR teams are comprised of federal air marshals, surface transportation security inspectors, transportation security officers, behavior detection officers and bomb sniffing dogs and are used to augment security at key transportation facilities around the country.
TSA’s primary focus, with congressional support, has been aviation security. New TSA Administrator John Pistole told USA Today in an interview earlier this month that he will make rail and subway security a high priority because these transit systems have been targeted by terrorists elsewhere in the world and are seen as easier targets to attack.