Marshal Draw

.S. Mint Police Chief Bill Daddio is hurting. Forty-seven of his 300 police officers, who protect Mint employees at six facilities across the country, have turned in their badges and headed off to the Transportation Security Administration to work as air marshals.

After losing one in six cops in the last few months, Daddio is trying to fill in the gaps by working his remaining officers overtime. But he is worried about keeping the Mint's security levels up at Washington headquarters and in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Denver, West Point, N.Y., and Fort Knox, Ky. "We've been hit pretty hard," Daddio says. "If this continues in the future, we may have to start curtailing a few items. We may have to change how we do business."

The Mint police chief isn't the only one feeling insecure since the TSA started hiring air marshals, criminal investigators and other law enforcement officers after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Throughout government, federal law enforcement officials are scrambling to maintain security on the ground as their front-line officers leave in droves for the new Transportation agency.

At the Veterans Affairs Department, top cop John Baffa is struggling to hold on to the 2,500 cops who keep the peace at VA medical centers across the country. "Each hospital is like a city," Baffa says. "The officers have the same job as city cops. You name it, we deal with it." The VA police force's attrition rate, normally a relatively high 13 percent because VA police are paid less than many federal, state and local police, has spiked to 20 percent this year. At least 60 officers left the VA for the air marshals program from February through June.

By Government Executive's tally, federal agencies lost more than 1,400 law enforcement officers and support personnel to the Transportation Security Administration between September and June. That number is an understatement, since some law enforcement agencies didn't start tracking until after they had already lost officers to TSA and others didn't keep track of their losses at all. The Transportation Security Administration doesn't make public the number of air marshals.

Because of the exodus, law enforcement officers who stay behind are working longer hours and covering more ground than they used to. Park Police officers, for example, are patrolling less regularly in New York, where TSA's higher salaries have lured away many cops. A normal weekly shift for Park Service officers would be 40 hours with two days off.

"Everyone goes to a 12-hour shift," says Park Police union official Leon Capps. "They work four days at 12 hours and then work at least one or two more days per week. With all that overtime, they are less likely to be effective."

Law enforcement managers are struggling to hire replacements for air marshal converts-on top of hiring efforts to replace the large number of officers who are retiring or taking jobs with higher paying federal, state and local law enforcement agencies or private security firms.

"It's robbing Peter to pay Paul," says Secret Service spokesman Brian Marr. The service has lost 103 of its 1,000 uniformed division officers, three special agents and two dozen administrative and support employees to TSA this year. The losses came at the same time as the Secret Service's workload has grown since Sept. 11, putting an even greater strain on officers who have been clocking heavy overtime to provide protection to federal officials, foreign diplomats and government facilities. "Everyone is being tasked with a little bit more clerical and administrative work," Marr says. "Our groups are having to work a little bit longer. We have very dedicated individuals at the Secret Service."

The Transportation Security Administration's quick push to secure the skies may be coming at an unexpected cost: less security on the ground. The likelihood of another hijacking may be declining, but vital law enforcement missions such as guarding the border, overseeing federal prisoners and protecting federal officials, property and citizens who visit government facilities are at risk. Managers across government are doing their best to replace the experienced officers they've lost, but it takes months to hire and train new law enforcement officers. Even then, they need several years of on-the-job experience to become fully effective.

THE MONEY CORRAL

The concurrent strengthening of the airborne flank in the war against terrorism and the weakening of the earthbound flank are based on the simplest of reasons.

The air marshals are better paid than everyone else.

U.S. Park Police Officer Chance Bergo turned in his badge in June after five years as a patrol officer dealing with drug cases, traffic violations and drunken drivers. Bergo was generally happy with his job; he enjoyed the variety of situations that he had to deal with as a Park Police officer. "I worked here as an intern and then came back as a patrol officer," Bergo says. "The Park Police is superior in terms of the quality of work." But Bergo liked the idea of getting in on the ground level of the new TSA, in part for the career mobility. Moreover, the agency said it would pay him 50 percent more than the Park Police did. "They are interested in your qualifications and your level of competence," he says.

The more than 1,400 federal law enforcement officers who have quit their jobs to work for TSA did so for a variety of reasons-the novelty of the air marshal job, the chance to contribute directly to the fight against terrorism, the opportunity to travel, better work schedules, relocation, a change of pace. But, across the board, the key motivators were better pay and benefits.

Federal law enforcement officers fall into several job classifications, including criminal investigators, police, Border Patrol agents, Customs inspectors, correctional officers and security personnel. Their pay and benefits are all over the map, and federal law enforcement officers tend to be well-versed in who's got what and who doesn't have what.

For starters, salaries cover a wide range:

• VA police typically are paid at the GS-6 level and have an average salary of $34,115.
• Navy civilian police are primarily GS-5s, making an average of $30,941.
• Border Patrol agents are typically GS-9s, and earn an average of $46,379.
• The Customs Service recently boosted grades for its inspectors and canine enforcement officers from GS-9 to GS-11, with average pay of $53,622.

Criminal investigators and air marshals also receive special law enforcement retirement benefits. They pay slightly more toward their pensions with each paycheck than most federal employees do, but in return they can retire with full benefits at age 50 with 20 years of service or at any age with 25 years of service. Some law enforcement agents, including most federal police officers, are covered by the standard federal retirement system and must wait until at least age 55 with 30 years of service to retire with full benefits.

At the INS, Border Patrol agents get law enforcement retirement benefits, but immigration inspectors don't. At the Bureau of Prisons, anyone who deals with prisoners is considered a law enforcement agent for retirement purposes. But some officers at other federal agencies, such as the Federal Protective Service, who deal with the criminals before they become prisoners, aren't.

The discrepancies have been exacerbated by legislation that has changed pay and benefits for small subsets of federal law enforcement officers, after agency officials, union representatives or law enforcement associations lobbied Congress for special treatment. For example, Park Police and members of the Secret Service Uniformed Division don't receive full locality pay, leaving them shortchanged compared even with employees outside law enforcement. Meanwhile, federal law enforcement officers in New York and Boston get more locality pay than other federal officials in those cities. Some law enforcement agents, including Customs inspectors, can get a 5 percent annual bonus if they have foreign language skills, but INS agents aren't eligible. Law enforcement agencies with the lowest pay and benefits have the highest rates of employee turnover.

In an effort to give TSA officials maximum flexibility to staff up quickly, Congress granted the TSA wide-ranging authority to set pay and benefits when it created the agency last fall. TSA officials decided to adopt the pay-banding system used by the Federal Aviation Administration, which lets the agency match or beat experienced officers' current salaries. The air marshals' three pay bands give the least experienced officers pay rates of $35,100 to $54,300; more experienced officers are paid $42,800 to $66,200; and the most experienced officers earn salaries from $52,200 to $80,800.

On top of higher pay rates, air marshals also get law enforcement availability pay and special retirement benefits.

John Magaw, head of the Transportation Security Administration, has tried to downplay the recruitment of air marshals from other federal agencies. Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., pointed out to Magaw at a June House Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee hearing that air marshals could make more than $80,000. Magaw said that number was misleading. He said 84.3 percent of federal air marshals draw $36,400. "Wherever they live, they will get locality pay on top of that. But that still doesn't drive it up to those numbers you're talking about," Magaw said. "And I really have, I've spent hours on these charts."

Magaw conceded that air marshals also get 25 percent law enforcement availability pay. He also noted that TSA was generally providing current law enforcement personnel with an additional 5 percent pay increase because air marshals don't receive regular tenure-based pay increases, which other federal law enforcement officers are paid under standard civil service rules.

"There is the perception that TSA is recruiting employees from other federal agencies by offering high salaries and bonuses to join our team," Magaw said. But the typical base salary is in the $30,000 to $40,000 range, he said, adding that TSA is not providing recruitment bonuses.

WILD, WILD WEST

For Bob Andary, Magaw's assurances provide little comfort. Andary, the inspector general at the Government Printing Office, is the hardest hit manager that Government Executive interviewed. He had seven agents working for him before TSA started recruiting. Now he has four. He would have been down to three, but one of the agents offered a job as an air marshal turned it down. The GPO agents are basically detectives, uncovering contractor fraud and investigating employee misconduct. The agents also used to help out other law enforcement agencies on investigations. Now Andary and his staff are just trying to keep up with their own workload. "We got a request for [investigative] assistance yesterday," Andary said in June. "I had to say no."

Andary says the three agents who left went mainly for the money. Through one of the quirks of law enforcement compensation in the government, investigators for the printing office's inspector general don't get law enforcement availability pay, although IG investigators in other agencies do.

Now Andary is trying to staff back up, but the competition for agents is tough. "We're doing our darnedest," Andary says.

No one knows that better than INS recruiting chief Sid Waldstreicher, who has the toughest recruitment challenge in government. In the wake of Sept. 11, Waldstreicher already had faced the massive task of hiring 8,000 employees this year. Now, with losses to TSA, the turnover for several occupations, including Border Patrol agents, has doubled. The Immigration and Naturalization Service lost 396 Border Patrol agents, 50 detention enforcement officers and 73 immigration inspectors to the air marshal program in just four months this spring.

Waldstreicher estimates he will have to hire 10,000 employees this year-and 10,000 again next year. Those numbers are even more daunting considering that only one in every 50 applicants for INS law enforcement jobs is hired. The rest are eliminated during interviews, testing and background investigations.

After Border Patrol agents and immigration inspectors are hired, they receive 13 to 19 weeks of training. It can take eight months from the start of the application process until the day an agent reports to duty.

INS officials are frustrated by the losses to TSA. Waldstreicher says the INS recently hired an immigration inspector at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. The INS vetted the candidate and put him through months of training. He started on the job making $28,000. TSA came along and offered the inspector $40,000. So he left. "TSA has pay banding," Waldstreicher says. "We hired the person, put him through all the training and now he's hired by the TSA at $40,000. That's a flexibility we don't have."

INS has one of the most important homeland security roles in government. Its agents help keep terrorists out of the country and, if they entered illegally, track them down. "No organization can be expected to effectively carry out its mission while losing so many experienced personnel," National Border Patrol Council President T.J. Bonner said at an April 10 hearing of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources. The council is part of the American Federation of Government Employees union.

HIGH NOON

In the best-case scenario, federal law enforcement agencies will muddle through the current exodus, pay a lot of overtime and get back to full force next year. In the worst-case scenario, personnel losses to the air marshal program will leave federal property vulnerable to more crime or even attack.

Filling the ranks won't be easy.

At Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia, civilian police officers are among the worst paid in government. Michael Blount, president of the National Association of Government Employees local union, says officers regularly take the first offer they get from other law enforcement agencies. Many get their training, work a year for the Navy and then move on, he says. Low pay, morale and staffing have left the police force with a spotty record, he says. "No one in the Navy's brain trust wants to understand that an undermanned, underpaid workforce with low morale and lack of esprit de corps cannot perform at what is needed in today's post-Sept. 11th world," Blount says.

Police officers at several agencies aren't confident that their leaders are looking out for them. At the U.S. Postal Service, uniformed officers say little has been done over the years to discourage them from leaving to join other federal law enforcement agencies, including TSA. "Senior management is looking into reducing the amount of training given to Postal Police officers so that they would be less desirable to other agencies," one officer at the Postal Inspection Service says.

Jim Pasco, executive director for the Fraternal Order of Police, says some law enforcement agencies are reaping what they've sown. "The Capitol Police haven't treated their officers well," Pasco says, adding that the force lost at least 46 cops to TSA. Capitol Police officials have successfully pushed for congressional support of higher pay for front-line officers. "At times in the past, there has been a total absence in the managerial structure of people who even had a clue of how to do good police work," Pasco says.

But for the most part, law enforcement managers across government are trying to convince the people who control the pay rates and purse strings at OPM and the Office of Management and Budget that higher pay and benefits for everyone would ensure a stronger federal law enforcement workforce. "Law enforcement credentials are in high demand," says Joseph Moravec, who oversees the Federal Protective Service at the General Services Administration. "The price for people with those kinds of skills is going up."

The Federal Protective Service maintains order at hundreds of federal properties across the country. The service is losing officers faster than it can bring them on, with 181 cops leaving over the past three years, out of a force of less than 400, who also oversee about 7,000 contract security guards. At least 56 have left for other agencies, though officials haven't tracked where officers have ended up. "Our mission is to protect the lives of federal workers and the millions of Americans who visit federal buildings," Moravec says. "It's a serious mission. [The attrition to other agencies] just stretches our people thinner and thinner. They have to cover more buildings and work longer hours to make sure we're doing our job."

Almost all law enforcement officials, from the U.S. Mint to the Army's civilian police force to the INS, want to pay their officers better salaries and retirement benefits. "When a criminal investigator stands on the left of you and a police officer stands on the right, but you say to the police officer, you're not a law enforcement officer [for retirement purposes], what the heck are you supposed to do?" laments Dick Patrick, head of the Army's civilian police program, which employs more than 700 officers. "It would help everybody's recruitment if OPM would change that." Many officials are also pushing for law enforcement availability pay.

To compete, VA police chief Baffa is coming up with plans for recruitment and retention bonuses and pushing for more competitive pay and benefits. "It's supply and demand," Baffa says. "All of the agencies are struggling for the same piece of the pie."

OPM officials won't talk about proposals for solving the law enforcement pay and benefits morass. Absent administration action, members of Congress have introduced a slew of bills aimed at addressing low pay and benefits in the ranks of federal law enforcement officers. But many of the bills cover only pockets of the workforce-one seeks to help Park Police and Secret Service Uniformed Division officers, another the Federal Protective Service. Only a few would grant better benefits to most law enforcement officers.

The discrepancies could increase if the Homeland Security Department is formed, putting the INS, Federal Protective Service, Customs Service and other law enforcement agencies under the same roof as TSA. Those agencies could then adopt pay-banding structures, through which they could offer higher salaries, since the Bush administration's proposal for the new department calls for wide-ranging authority to set pay and benefits. That would leave police forces at the Veterans Affairs Department, military bases and U.S. Mint, among other places, at an even greater disadvantage.

Agencies already are using a handful of tools to recruit and hold on to workers, including recruitment bonuses, relocation bonuses, retention allowances, promotions, reclassifying jobs at higher pay rates and providing take-home cars.

But officials hope the administration will make some tools easier to use. The INS shies away from recruitment bonuses, for example, because OPM regulations require agencies to pay bonuses on the first day of employment. New employees who don't make it through training get to keep recruitment bonuses. Another hurdle is that OPM prohibits agencies from offering retention allowances-which can be worth up to 25 percent of salary-when employees threaten to go work for other agencies. Some officials are concerned the allowances would spark costly bidding wars for workers. Others say such wars are already happening and they need to bow to that reality.

In fact, law enforcement officials across government expect the exodus to TSA to continue into the fall. Magaw said in June that the agency plans to hire an additional 1,000 uniformed law enforcement officers (outside the air marshal program) in fiscal 2002, as well as more criminal investigators. U.S. Mint Police Chief Daddio says he expects even more losses as TSA hires law enforcement officers for airports nationwide. Nearly half of the officers who have left so far have been in the Washington area. Now he's bracing for losses at the Mint's other facilities. "I'll get creamed all the way across the country," Daddio says.

While worries about fulfilling homeland security missions abound, most officials hope that they'll be able to quickly replace lost officers with young, energetic recruits-or even bring some of them back.

TSA may well face a backlash if newly hired air marshals find the jobs aren't what they expected. Officials in other agencies are hoping their former employees will become bored as air marshals posing as airline passengers and return to their old jobs. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which lost seven agents to TSA, has already welcomed back two officers who decided the air marshal program wasn't for them.

"This tide will slowly turn," Park Police union chief Capps says.