Congress weighs property management reform bills

An emerging, bipartisan consensus on the need for reform in the way federal property is managed may rescue the issue from this year's legislative graveyard. If so, agencies would soon be free to implement innovative strategies in managing what has become the largest portfolio of real property in the country.

At a hearing Wednesday, the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Management, Information and Technology considered two competing proposals for change.

H.R. 3285, filed last year by Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, favors public-private partnerships for the renovation, subleasing or construction of federal properties, and mandates performance measures for government property management. A General Services Administration plan focuses instead on establishing governmentwide principles for asset management, then allowing agencies unprecedented flexibility in maximizing the use of the properties at their disposal.

Senate Government Affairs Committee Chairman Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., and ranking minority member Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., introduced legislation that would implement the GSA approach on June 28, at the request of the agency. The bill, S. 2805, has yet to be submitted to the House.

"All of the members at today's hearing have agreed to work together to find a consensus on the issue," said Bonnie Heald, spokeswoman for subcommittee chairman Stephen Horn, R-CA. "We hope to get a vote on this [before the end of the session]."

Word that some form of asset management reform may move this year came as a surprise. Thompson had stressed that his filing of the bill was meant merely to spur discussion on the matter.

"We are introducing this proposal today for the purpose of encouraging study and comment by all interested parties," the senator said. "The committee expects to follow through with further legislative action in the next Congress."

The 440 buildings and 62.5 million acres owned and operated by the federal government fall under the jurisdiction of the 1949 Federal Property and Administrative Services Act. While the amount of assets under government control has grown exponentially since its passage, there have been only minor amendments to the law. The pending legislation would introduce several new tools that, advocates claim, would bring federal asset management into the 21st century.

Agencies are currently forbidden from swapping or selling unused property with each other. Likewise, there is little incentive to unload surplus assets because any profit realized goes to the $13 billion Land and Water Conservation Fund, which primarily distributes money to the National Park Service and the states.

The GSA bill would require agencies to appoint a senior real property officer, and allow agencies to enter into agreements for leasing space they cannot use to both public and private entities. Agencies would also receive the bulk of the profits from the sale of surplus property. Sessions' legislation would go even further, providing agencies authority to establish public-private partnerships for both the leasing of federal property and the construction of new buildings.

"My guess is that we will see the merging of the best of both bills," said David Bibb, deputy associate administrator for real property at GSA, who bemoaned his agency's delay in filing a plan. "It shouldn't have taken this long, but we went through two rounds of agency review and comments."

The only group to oppose reform at today's hearing was the National Law Center on Poverty and Homelessness. The group expressed concern that programs for the homeless, which have first refusal in the disposal of surplus property as a result of the McKinney Act of 1987, would suffer under the new flexibility as agencies would be less likely to make property available. In the last decade, 65 properties with a total value of $69 million have been donated.