Don’t expect much to happen in this year’s fast dwindling congressional session, but a bi-partisan group of senators today introduced legislation to bolster the Federal Protective Service, responsible for security at some 9,000 federal buildings.
The bill would push FPS to hire 500 more full-time employees over the next four years, require the agency to do more to ensure the competence of contract guards, and mandate standards for checkpoint detection technologies for explosives and other threats at federal facilities, according to a news release from Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
In a sting revealed last year, Government Accountability Office investigators succeeded in bringing bomb-making materials into 10 high-security federal buildings.
Besides Lieberman, the bill’s sponsors are the committee’s top Republican, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, and Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, according to the release.
FPS is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
