Who will pay for extra airport security?
TEXT OF STORY
Bill Radke: In other news, investigators are trying to figure out how a man snuck explosives aboard a Northwest flight from Amsterdam to Detroit this weekend. The incident has airport security tightened again — there’ll be more canine patrols, more inspections, all of which will cost money, as Marketplace’s Alisa Roth reports.
Alisa Roth: Most of the cost of the additional security measures are going to be paid for by the government through the Transportation Security Administration or TSA.
Tom Smith is with the Airports Council International. He explains the extent of the federal government’s responsibility:
Tom Smith: The federal government will pick up the expenses at the point of the screening line. Either additional manpower deployed or just the hourly cost of additional screening, that’s a TSA expense. The magnetometers, the x-ray machines for the luggage, that’s a TSA expense.
Those are all disbursed through the federal budget. That $2.50 security fee on each leg of your trip helps pay for it.
He says it’s hard to know how how these new costs will compare to other ramp-ups of security, because that money was all appropriated through broader expansions of the TSA. Smith says anything that comes before the security line — like police officers or bomb-sniffing dogs — are the responsibility of the airport or the local law enforcement.
I’m Alisa Roth for Marketplace.
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