Burbank Airport raises $8,000 for TSA officers during partial government shutdown
By Tom Wait, Matthew Rodriguez
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BURBANK, California (KCAL, KCBS) — Burbank Airport raised $8,000 to help TSA officers affected during the partial government shutdown.
The airport’s police officers and firefighters organized the event to help their federal colleagues, who missed their first full paycheck last Friday amid the roughly month-long shutdown.
“Everybody in the police department, the fire department, and the airport people want to do anything to help them,” Airport Chief of Police Edward Skvarna said.
Due to regulations, TSA agents cannot accept direct donations. The airport said the $8,000 in donations will be converted into gas cards to help their colleagues amid rising fuel prices.
“We can give the gas cards to their federal security director that’s in charge of them and they can pass them out,” Skvarna said. “These TSOs are patriots and great Americans. To keep this operating is unbelievable to all of us. We know how long we’d work if they quit paying us, and it wouldn’t be 35 days.”
Democrats and Republicans are at a stalemate over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees TSA.
More than 300 TSA employees have left the agency since the start of the DHS shutdown. This is the third shutdown in less than six months.
Nationwide, more than 10% of officers called out sick on Wednesday, with Atlanta and Houston facing callout rates reaching as high as 38%, according to TSA.
The staffing shortages also forced some security checkpoints to shut down in Houston and Philadelphia on Thursday.
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