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Washington, D.C. – Opening remarks, as prepared, of Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management Subcommittee Chairman Scott Perry (R-PA) from today’s hearing, entitled, “Examining the Effectiveness of the Federal Protective Service: Are Federal Buildings Secure?”:

Before I begin, I first want to thank the dedicated personnel of the Federal Protective Service (FPS), who work to protect federal workers and visitors to federal facilities across our country. Over the years there have been FPS law enforcement and contract guards who have made the ultimate sacrifice to protect workers and visitors in federal buildings.

Since 2019, there have been nearly 1,000 assaults at federal facilities and nearly 7,000 arrests. Because of this, it is critically important that the FPS law enforcement officers and the thousands of contract guards, known as Protective Service Officers or “PSOs”, have what they need to do their job. Given the importance of this issue, the Committee requested that GAO review building security and, more specifically, conduct covert tests similar to the work done by GAO in 2009.

Today’s hearing will examine the findings of GAO’s work and the current state of FPS’ protection of our nation’s federal buildings.

FPS officers, along with more than 14,000 PSOs, are responsible for the protection of and security at approximately 9,000 facilities, the majority of which are owned or managed by GSA. FPS law enforcement officers manage the PSOs, ensure they are properly trained, are at their post, and respond when needed to any incident. However, there have been ongoing challenges that impact the ability of FPS law enforcement to do their jobs.

Recently, there have been increasing rates of crime, drug use, and homelessness across the country that are impacting the safety of those who work and visit federal facilities. For example, the United States Department of Health and Human Services’ office in San Francisco advised some federal employees to work from home “in light of the conditions at the federal building.”

Earlier this year, Representatives Chavez-DeRemer, Ezell, and I sent letters to the Director of FPS and the GSA Administrator to assess how the increasing levels of crime, drug abuse, and homelessness have impacted the protection of federal buildings and the safety of those that work and visit them. The letters also raised concerns regarding how increasing crime rates may be leading to more empty and unused federal building space. This is all happening while FPS is understaffed with 259 law enforcement positions left unfilled.

Additionally, in its recent work, GAO revealed that while there has been some improvement since building security testing in 2009, the success rate in identifying prohibited items on average is only 50 percent.

Compounding these challenges, the tools FPS needs to effectively manage the PSOs don’t work.  As GAO found in their latest report, the new data systems used by FPS law enforcement to oversee their contract guards or PSOs have significant flaws. Despite spending nearly $30 million of taxpayer funds on new electronic systems, FPS struggles to know if a guard is at their post or not, or if that guard even has the qualifications needed to detect dangerous weapons. This lack of reliable data tracking has raised concerns with customer agencies like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA), and further this lack of reliability has impacted the accessibility of services to the taxpayer. The idea that the IRS had to close 30 of their Taxpayer Assistance Centers and the SSA closed over 500 locations for full days because a contract guard failed to report to their post is unacceptable.

GAO has issued report after report for years now on many of these issues, yet FPS has not yet resolved them. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today on these issues and thank them for being here.

Click here for more information from today’s hearing, including video and witness testimony.