Taxpayer Property Rights and Wrongs

The key to economic success for anybody who owns excess property is to either rent it out or sell the property.  Holding vacant property makes no sense.  What many taxpayers may not realize is that the federal government owns quite a bit of property.  In fact, according to Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), “The federal government owns over one million properties across the county, making it the largest property owner in the United States.”  And, as one can imagine, not all this property is being used.  Sen. Coburn, along with a bipartisan group of Senators including Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), and Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), want to rectify this problem.   In a May 21, 2012 letter to the General Services Administration (GSA), “According to the Federal Real Property Profile, the government’s real estate portfolio is comprised of nearly 900,000 buildings and structures worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Of these assets, we are told that nearly 80,000 are underutilized or excess, costing taxpayers more than $1.6 billion in annual operating expenses.”

This is not a new problem.  According to the General Accounting Office’s (GAO) High Risk list published in 2011, federal property management has been on the High Risk List since 2003.  “While progress has been made, certain long-standing problems remain.   OMB [Office of Management and Budget] has not developed a corrective action plan to address the fact that agencies increasingly rely on leasing. GSA, as the government’s principal landlord, now leases more property than it owns. In addition, although efforts to dispose of unneeded assets have been made, a large number of excess and underutilized assets remain.”

According to a recent Yahoo/ABC News story, “A Congressional committee recently held a hearing inside the vacant, former Georgetown power plant building, pressing the government to get rid of properties it is not using.  ‘Any company that allowed this to happen would be bankrupt,’ said Congressman John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.”

In March 2012, Sens. Coburn, Carper, Portman, and Pryor introduced The Federal Real Property Asset Management Reform Act of 2012 to address the issue.  According to the press release, the legislation “would help facilitate the disposal of underutilized and unneeded federal property and establish a framework for federal agencies to better manage existing space in a more cost-effective manner. The bill would address vulnerabilities in current law by streamlining the current federal real property disposal process and implementing measures that eliminate property mismanagement and achieve greater efficiencies within the existing disposal process.” 

Selling excess property seems like a no brainer and won’t affect any government services.  The federal government gets to sell unneeded property and taxpayers get to save some money.  There is no reason why The Federal Real Property Asset Management Reform Act of 2012 shouldn’t be fast tracked and passed immediately.