Jay Inslee: “I just want to answer a couple of the questions people have asked about our plan of federalizing these security forces.…”

“I just want to answer a couple of the questions people have asked about our plan of federalizing these security forces. One of the arguments against this essentially has been you will not be able to layoff incompetent people once they are Federal employees. People should realize that in the Senate bill we have made provisions to give additional flexibility to management to lay people off, to take disciplinary action, consistent with their law enforcement function. We need to treat these people like FBI agents, Border Patrol and Federal Marshals. They should have a similar disciplinary system, that perhaps does have more flexibility for management than a different Federal job. That is a really a red herring, because we have taken care of that, to make sure that if there is incompetence in that workforce, we can take care of it, just like we need to with Federal Marshals and the like. That is taken care of. The second argument people have played is there are some other countries that have different systems. There are some other countries that do have some private contractors under government supervision, which is fine. Other countries have managed in some circumstances to make that work. But those countries are not America. We are 20 times bigger than some of those countries, number one.…”