Hearing on Federal Protective Service examines profit vs. public service

Profit motive vs. public service.

That's one way to sum up the House Homeland Security Committee hearing Wednesday on federalizing the Federal Protective Service. The meeting quickly evolved from what could have been a bureaucratic discussion on outsourcing and insourcing to a more interesting debate on the purpose of private enterprise vs. the role of government.

That conversation is likely to move toward centerstage as the Obama administration attempts to bring more jobs back into the government's stable, reversing a Bush administration preference for privatizing the functions of government.

Clark Kent Ervin moved Wednesday's hearing from a dry debate over federalization and privatization to a more fundamental discussion about the role of capitalism. With no equivocation, Ervin, a former inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the FPS, quickly made his position clear. "In my judgment, the time has come to take the admittedly radical step of federalizing the agency's contract guard force," he told the committee.

He offered two reasons, neither of which would give much comfort to the protectors of profit.

"First, logic. It is inarguable that private contractors are primarily motivated by the desire to make a profit, and as much profit as possible. . . . The way to maximize profit is to minimize costs. The less guards are paid in salary and benefits and the less money is invested in their training, the more profit their contractor-employers can make. . . .

"Second, experience. The reason we created TSA [the Transportation Security Administration] after 9/11 and federalized the airport passenger- and baggage-screener workforce was the recognition that, left to their own devices before the attacks, contractors put profit ahead of security. For all the problems that remain with screeners today, they are better paid, better trained and more motivated than they were before the terror attacks."

The FPS provides security at government buildings controlled by the General Services Administration, with about 15,000 private guards and 700 federal law enforcement officers on the staff. Notably, the White House, the Capitol and a few other key federal facilities have their own police forces.

The service has come under fire in a series of Government Accountability Office reports, such as the one I wrote about Wednesday, that point to chilling lapses of security at federal buildings protected mostly by private guards who are managed, sometimes poorly, by the FPS.

The reports are enough to scare some members of Congress into taking a serious look at converting from a private force to a public one to protect public buildings.

Federalization "is an option that we ought to consider," Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said after the hearing.

But it's not what defenders of private enterprise on the committee seemed to favor. And they certainly didn't like Ervin's comments about the profit motive, even though his advocacy of federalization was carefully nuanced.