Personnel Oversight and Shift Tracking Act of 2025

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3425) to direct the Director of the Federal Protective Service to establish processes to strengthen oversight, performance, and accountability of contract security personnel engaged in the protection of certain buildings and grounds, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material in the Record on H.R. 3425, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3425, the POST Act of 2025, strengthens the Federal Protective Service, or FPS, and their ability to secure Federal facilities and improve accountability for the contract guards who protect them.

The Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure has conducted bipartisan oversight of FPS operations and Federal facility security. Both testimony at hearings and Government Accountability Office reports have reinforced the need for these reforms.

The Federal Protective Service is tasked with securing approximately 9,000 GSA-leased and -owned facilities across America. To protect these buildings, FPS oversees over 15,000 contracted guards, known as protective security officers.

Despite the size and importance of the FPS' mission, serious vulnerabilities exist in its oversight of contract guards. For example, one GAO investigation found that contracted guards failed to detect concealed weapons, including batons and pepper spray, in half of covert security tests. While FPS uses covert testing to assess security vulnerabilities, they lack a standardized system to track, analyze, and respond to the results.

The POST Act addresses this critical gap by requiring the FPS Director to establish and maintain a centralized database to capture covert test data, including why a contract guard failed to detect contraband.

The legislation mandates quarterly analyses of this data to identify trends and training needs and requires targeted, corrective training for guards who fail covert tests, which helps to close performance gaps and improve public safety.

This is a commonsense reform that turns the tests that FPS is already conducting into data that can drive actionable improvements, making Federal buildings safer for employees and the American people who we serve.

The POST Act also tackles another persistent problem: FPS' broken shift tracking system.

In 2018, FPS launched the Post Tracking System to modernize its paper-based guard sign-in process. Seven years later, the Post Tracking System remains unreliable, and FPS still relies on paper records.

As a result, FPS has been unable to issue timely notifications to tenant agencies about guard shortages. In some cases, this even forced the closure of Federal buildings to the public.

The POST Act would require FPS to either fix PTS or replace it with a modern, dependable solution.

H.R. 3425 contains practical measures to improve FPS' oversight of contract guards, strengthen accountability, and improve safety at Federal buildings.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Kennedy) for his leadership on this legislation and the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Figures) for working on this bipartisan bill.

Mr. Speaker, I urge support of this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Kennedy).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 3425, as amended, strengthens oversight of the Federal Protective Service's contract guard program and ensures protective security officers are properly trained and accountable. Additionally, and importantly, this legislation modernizes critical systems to make Federal buildings safer for employees and the public.

Mr. Speaker, I urge support of H.R. 3425, as amended, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of my bill, H.R. 3425, the Personnel Oversight and Shift Tracking Act of 2025, or the POST Act.

I thank Mr. Barrett and Mr. Figures for their support of this really important bill.

This is a commonsense bill that fixes a broken system and restores accountability within the Federal Protective Service.

The Federal Protective Service, or FPS, is responsible for protecting nearly 9,000 Federal facilities nationwide. In fiscal year 2024, FPS operated with a $2.2 billion budget and oversaw more than 15,000 contract protective security officers.

With that level of funding and manpower, taxpayers expect reliable results. Unfortunately, that is not what they are getting. A recent GAO investigation showed contract guards failed to detect banned items like batons and pepper spray in half of all covert tests. That is unacceptable, and it should never have been allowed to persist. It is also preventable.

H.R. 3425 makes sure FPS reviews these failures, documents them, identifies the root causes, and then takes corrective action.

This bill also addresses the embarrassing state of FPS's Post Tracking System. Back in 2018, FPS promised to modernize guard sign-in with a digital system. Years later, that system still doesn't work, and the agency is still relying on paper as its official record. That means Washington can't even confirm in real time whether a building is staffed and secure. In some cases, buildings have had to close because of it. That is a waste of money and a failure of leadership.

H.R. 3425 fixes this by giving FPS 6 months to either make the system work or replace it with one that does.

Mr. Speaker, this is not complicated. When Americans walk into a Federal building, they deserve to know it is staffed and secured. The American people expect their government to meet basic duties. The POST Act honors that expectation by restoring accountability and requiring results.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 3425, the POST Act, so that we restore proper oversight and accountability in the Federal Protective Service and protect taxpayers from waste and failure.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 3425, the Personnel Oversight and Shift Tracking Act of 2025, a bill that I am proud to cosponsor.

This bill would require the Director of the FPS, the Federal Protective Service, to establish processes to strengthen oversight, performance, and accountability of contract security personnel engaged in the protection of Federal buildings and grounds that are owned, occupied, or secured by GSA.

FPS law enforcement officers and the contract guards who support them risk their lives every day to protect Federal workers and the public by controlling access to government facilities and screening visitors for prohibited items. As part of these efforts, FPS investigators have covertly tested security at Federal buildings to ensure the accuracy of these systems and have developed a tracking system to ensure guards are qualified and posts are staffed adequately.

Despite these efforts, however, guards failed to detect prohibited items in about half of the 27 covert tests that the Government Accountability Office investigators conducted just last year.

Additionally, the new FPS tracking system has not worked well enough to replace the old paper-based system, as my colleague has just described. By improving FPS data collection and analysis and implementing the findings on these security tests, the agency will be able to better ensure the safety and security of Federal buildings, employees, the public, and the FPS officers themselves.

Mr. Speaker, I support this legislation and urge all Members to do the same to make sure that we are holding our contractors accountable and doing everything we can to protect our Federal buildings and our personnel located within.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I support H.R. 3425, and I thank my colleague, Mr. Kennedy, for his leadership on this important matter. The POST Act of 2025 is something that I urge all of my colleagues to support, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I was absent from the floor and missed the roll call votes on the Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass H.R. 3424, SPACE Act of 2025; and on the Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass H.R. 3425, POST Act of 2025. Had I been present, I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 240 and YEA on Roll Call No. 241.

Mr. Speaker, I missed all the votes in the vote series on September 8, 2025. Had I been present, I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 241, final passage of H.R. 3425, the POST Act; and YEA on Roll Call No. 240, final passage of H.R. 3424, the SPACE Act.