“Transparency is the first step to a reformed Secret Service.
But what’s already known about the agency shows there’s plenty of room for improvement. John Koskinen, the former commissioner of the IRS who worked on the 2021 NAPA report on the Secret Service’s workforce, found that the agency needed more staffing.
“The place ran better if they had enough people, but they were chronically understaffed,” Koskinen said.
According to the report, employee turnover and a lack of sufficient hiring resulted in a staff that was less experienced, overworked, and stretched too thin. “The major finding was that as the staffing increased, employee satisfaction increased,” Koskinen said, meaning that more staffing would lead to less turnover as a result of burnout.
Koskinen believes Congress should focus on the lack of sufficient staffing, especially given the expanding scope of the Secret Service’s mission. The number of people it protects, for example, has grown, with requests like Trump’s for Secret Service protection for his adult children and top officials just before he left office.
It’s not clear, however, whether staffing problems had anything to do with the security lapses at Trump’s rally. The agency did hire over 600 new employees in 2023, and the Secret Service had recently bolstered security around the former president before the incident. That’s all the more reason for Congress to expand its investigation beyond what went wrong at Trump’s rally to get a full picture of how big of a problem staffing actually is — before committing more funding to the agency so that, if needed, the money can be properly directed.
One question that Congress should ask that could help address the Secret Service’s needs — from transparency to resources — is whether the Department of Homeland Security is where it should be housed. Before the 9/11 attacks, the Secret Service was part of the Treasury Department. But since it moved to Homeland Security in 2003, people have questioned whether it receives enough scrutiny or accountability, blending into a massive bureaucracy of over 250,000 employees.
“Are they given the right visibility in light of the importance of their job, or do they get lost day in and day out of that huge organization?” Koskinen said.
Now, with the Secret Service under renewed scrutiny, Congress has a chance to review the agency’s transparency, staffing problems, and the scope of its mission. And it might be time to rethink how the agency approaches all three.”
https://www.vox.com/policy/361371/trump-assassination-secret-service-failure