It’s the Lease We Can Do

Here’s a trivia question for you. How many buildings and properties – approximately, of course – are owned or leased by the federal government? Hint (not a very good one): it is far and away the largest landowner in the land. Give up? According to the General Accountability Office (GAO), that number is 400,000. Okay, some of those properties can run into the millions and millions of acres, so we not talking a series of tool sheds here. But does our government really need all that land and all those buildings? How many of the relevant structures are still viable, how many need to be or even can be repaired, and how many stand vacant, underutilized or are beyond repair (the picture above is from an old V.A. hospital in Chicago)? These are questions that the Obama administration has asked of its federal agencies in an effort to find areas where budget savings could be implemented.

It would seem like a pretty simple question, one that federal agencies, you would think, could answer just based on their current records, but perhaps they could be sure with a little down and dirty verification. Well, it is government, after all, and waste is nothing new to this sector. The GAO looked at the inventory lists they were provided with and began their own internal verification and assessment of the accuracy of that information. The GAO report was issued on June 20^th, and what it found should surprise absolutely no one, but then, the report was equally likely to piss off a whole lot of taxpayers.

The GAO found, for example, that “[P]roperties listed as occupied were found to be vacant or nearly vacant and sometimes in deplorable condition, according to the report…. An Agriculture Department building listed as in near-perfect condition and in full use was found to be vacant and with ‘multiple safety and health issues, including rat and beehive infestation.’ It has been demolished.” Washington Post, June 20^th. Oh my. The goal was to save $3 billion a year by making more efficient use of federal buildings, but that seems a rather modest goal when you think about the vastness of expected waste.

The story isn’t very pretty. “GAO researchers found that despite warnings that property information and management were flawed, the government knows very little about the condition and use of properties it owns. The problems also persist despite efforts to create a central database that would facilitate the sale or lease of properties that the government does not need or use.

“The General Services Administration acts as landlord or real estate broker for many federal agencies. In a statement on the agency’s blog [on June 19^th], the acting commissioner of GSA’s Public Building Services, Linda Chero, said the agency ‘has been working tirelessly with all federal landholding agencies to dispose of unneeded properties and since 2002 more than 3,355 federal properties have been taken off the government’s rolls… But more still needs to be done… …Our mission at GSA is to make government more efficient and save money, and as the federal government’s landlord, we will continue to do that by working with agencies to identify and dispose of buildings and facilities that are no longer needed.’ …

“In compiling its report, the GAO visited 180 buildings listed as vacant or underused at 26 sites in Washington, Dallas, Los Angeles and Oak Ridge, Tenn. They found ‘inconsistent and inaccurate’ data at 23 of the 26 locations, ‘raising concern that the database is not a useful tool for describing the nature, use and extent of excess and under-utilized federal real property.’” Oh my (again). Hard to get a handle on what should be done when you have absolutely no faith in the knowledge of what you actually have.

There are lots of additional suggestions on how to generate some short term budget deficit solutions, but some of them might just cost us more in the longer term. One is to sell U.S. government properties in super-prime locations and then build a substitute structure somewhere else (hopefully for vastly less). Or how about this one: sell a few key buildings to key developers and then lease them back over a longer term. This would provide a big cash infusion now and spread the payback over a longer term, say proponents. Aside from the corruption issue and the thought of a government bureaucracy trying to figure out the fair market value of a prime building location, isn’t that simply shifting the budget deficit problem to future generations that will have to pay the extra rent on those structures? Hmmmm…. I wonder what the White House would go for… or the Capitol?

The fact is that so many of our buildings that really weren’t needed represent “pork barrel” projects in favored Congressional districts where the representatives (often getting structures named for themselves) “played the game well”… while other federal structures languish in such sorry states of disrepair that they are barely useable. Marble and sandstone architectural marvels with malfunctioning steel filing cabinets and office walls that age without the hint of a possible paint job for decades. I mean what do you do with such massive waste, and exactly who is it that decides to consolidate office space, shut down entire buildings, sell off what we do not need…

Are you picturing some truly nasty turf wars here? “Hey, I need that building right where it is. My work force lives around here, and folks know where to come when they need our services.” “No you don’t! Move it or lose it! You’re going to share some space over there by the federal penitentiary that seems to be languishing from disuse!” Argh! I hate this, but at some level, there is one huge missing ingredient from this mix, one that seems to have left the building, gone out of town and may be headed out of the country: common sense. Maybe our federal administrators should have a conference on this subject… maybe in Hawaii or Las Vegas… NOT!!!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am picturing Americans toiling to pay taxes to fund waste like this!