Panel reverses course on airport security bill

A House committee reversed course on a bill Friday after hearing more about how it is expected to tighten security at Salt Lake City International Airport.

HB110 was unanimously passed out of the House Business and Labor Committee Friday with two amendments. The bill had failed in the same committee Monday by an 8-3 vote when several legislators questioned whether the state needed to get involved in what they considered to be a city licensing issue.

The bill would allow Salt Lake City to get FBI criminal background checks on taxi and shuttle van drivers and others who travel to and from the airport, excluding transit vehicles. Those vehicles currently can use a passenger pickup/drop-off area close to the airport terminal entrances that is off-limits to general-public vehicles and accessible only to people who have undergone such checks.

The bill's sponsor, Rep. Greg Hughes, R-Draper, said it is designed to "make sure that those that have this restricted access to this curb and this area have been scrutinized as others who have access to this area have been scrutinized."

Earl Morris, a representative of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, said the federal government could not provide FBI checks on those drivers without such a bill.

Cab drivers having the ability to come to the area adjacent to the terminals is "a concern," as is the current system that allows individuals to get the state background check results themselves, "which calls into question whether or not they're always accurate when they're given back to the city," he said.

"I think the system that they're asking you to approve now would enhance the security of this airport. . . . This simply gives us the opportunity to close one more vulnerability. We'd strongly urge the state of Utah to adopt this provision and this particular law so that it gives us the opportunity to address an issue that we think is a vulnerability and a risk to the city and to all those who travel to Salt Lake City."

Salt Lake City Council Chairman Dave Buhler also favored the bill.

"As you can imagine, with our society today, people come in here from all over the world even and are driving our taxicabs and other transportation vehicles, so to have a city- or statewide check really doesn't cut it," Buhler said. "And in this post-9/11 world, we just have to take these things really seriously and look at things differently than we did before."