For years, our legislators have been complaining about the huge amount of office space the government owns that sits empty. And yet no one has done anything about it.
The GAO included this information in a recent report on the situation:
In this testimony, we discuss the 21.5 million square feet of usable office space—conference rooms, team rooms, and offices—in the headquarters buildings of 24 agencies. During 3 weeks in January, February, and March of this year, 17 agencies' buildings were at 25% capacity or less.
Even worse, the agency also reported this office space is very costly:
Federal agencies spend about $2 billion a year to operate and maintain federal office buildings regardless of the buildings' utilization. In addition, agencies spend about $5 billion annually to lease office buildings. Any reduction in office space could reduce these costs. Office buildings also have environmental costs that could be lowered with better utilization.
Current practices make it very difficult to deal with this issue. Part of the problem is that the government doesn’t know how many people are going to be working in their facilities, particularly after Covid-19. We continue to hope that the administrative state will be downsized. Also, there are no procedures for selling these properties, so they take no action. And then there is the issue of “guarding their territory”: no agency wants to share their space with another agency. But the Biden administration has decided to be proactive on this concern:
The Biden administration claims it wants to reduce its real estate footprint. The White House, in the 2025 budget plan released Monday, proposes giving the federal government’s landlord, the General Services Administration, $425 million to right-size the federal footprint and reduce long-term costs through a new ‘optimization program.’
The White House budget plan also calls for giving GSA ‘broadened authorities related to the disposal of excess property.’
At first glance, this sounds like a practical way to cut federal costs. I’m just not sure we should feel reassured that the federal government actually wants to downsize anything.
Meantime, the White House estimates that nearly $13 billion in agency rental payments, over the past 15 years, “were never appropriated by Congress.” A proposal has been made to apply those payments to construction and maintenance. In addition, Congress appropriated in past years $645 million for a new, suburban FBI headquarters.
Do we really need a new FBI facility, with all that empty office space?
Convention of States is not only focused on educating the public about the mismanagement of facilities and the high expenditures, but on showing how our taxpayer dollars can be used more efficiently. We also need to develop a way to improve and dispose of these properties: is the GSA the best agent? The agencies must be challenged to change their status quo, and to release unneeded facilities to free up millions in tax dollars.
