Selling Off Seized TSA Contraband Is Just Barely Worth it for States

As I noted approximately five million years ago when I was but an intern babe in the woods, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) has a use for the property it takes from you, forgetful airline travelers. And it is not just so staffers can start hoarding your weird junk. No, your thousands of pocket knives, snow-globes, and more existential threats such as grenade-shaped belt buckles or purses with gun motifs can be sold or donated.

USA Today picks up the story today, and it turns out that 30 states either donate their seized contraband or have it sold at state surplus stores in order to make teeny tiny dents in their deficits:

Because the TSA had trouble coping with the accumulation, with 10 tons of contraband piling up at Los Angeles International Airport alone, [executive director of the National Association of State Agencies for Surplus Property Scott] Pepperman helped negotiate an agreement a decade ago with the federal government for states to take possession of the surrendered items.

"It was of no use to TSA. It's of no value to them. The cost and care of storage and handling was exceeding the commercial value of it to them," Pepperman says. "Some (states) put them up on eBay. Some have their own websites. Others have auctions."…

Some items have questionable resale value. Items that crossed Pepperman's path while he worked in the Pennsylvania surplus agency until two years ago included machetes, meat slicers and a box of rocks.

"We collected more fuzzy handcuffs than you would ever see in your life — boxes and boxes of fuzzy handcuffs," he says.

But what it comes down to is that it's barely worth it for the TSA to steal your stuff and sell it. All of the contraband, the semi-dangerous and the laughably benign, they will take it, but they're not very excited about it. The article reports that since 2004, Pennsylvania has earned $700,000 for its coffers and:

In Alabama, the surplus property division at the state Department of Economic and Community Affairs got about 3 tons last year from airports in Alabama and Florida. Sales totaled about $15,000 for the year, says Larry Childers, an agency spokesman.

"It's a net plus for us, but not a big moneymaker," Childers says.

Georgia opted out of collecting the objects in 2008 because it was too much trouble, says Steve Ekin, the surplus program manager for the Department of Administrative Services.

"It was a lot of work for very little return," Ekin says.

It's probably is more of a pain to sort through all this stuff than anything, but the TSA sure doesn't need one more incentive to not fix their absurd security theater. 

Reason on the TSA