Wasted Space = Wasted Tax Dollars

Earlier this week Taxpayers Protection Alliance posted a blog on an IRS-funded Star Trek parody video. And if that didn’t send you into outer space, the absurd example of government waste highlighted in today’s blog surely will. The topic of this blog is a totally different sort of space: wasted.  Not the type of wasted that college kids are on a Saturday night, no, the definition of wasted used here is about totally empty, unused federal buildings.

The Fiscal Times recently reported on a “new Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit, which found that between 2000 and 2010, taxpayers spent $835 million in extra construction costs for 33 courthouses that were overbuilt by more than 3.5 million square feet – enough extra space for nine average-sized courthouses.”  To give you an idea of just what this continues to cost taxpayers on a yearly basis, The Fiscal Times explains, “Even though the space sits empty and unused to this day, taxpayers continue to pay for $51 million in maintenance and operational costs every year.”

In one specific case regarding a courthouse in Florida, the GAO report went so far as to question the need for building a new courthouse at all.  The Fiscal Times’ article explains: “Considering the extent of the extra space built, it is unclear if the Ferguson Courthouse would have been necessary had the judiciary retained use of the Dyer Courthouse…The unused Dyer building, vacated in 2008, continues to cost taxpayers $1.2 million annually to maintain.”

How could this wasted space resulting in significant amounts of taxpayer dollars possibly be explained?  Simple.  The government merely miscalculated, overestimated the number of each courthouse would have.  Shocking, the government making a mistake. That seems like a poor excuse and prompts the question, why on Earth didn’t the federal government wait until it saw an increase in the number of judges, which would have created an actual need to build the new courthouses?   As TPA has explained many times before, Congress has little incentive to be wise stewards of taxpayer money.  After all, they aren’t the ones most severely harmed by these unwise, wasteful decisions.  In fact, Congress may even benefit from them.  For example, building even unnecessary buildings allows Members to scratch the back of its favored constituents.  What’s the harm in hiring – or more appropriately pulling strings – a contractor and builder that just so happen to also be hefty contributors to the member’s reelection campaign?

Although the GAO proposes increasing oversight of this practice before the damage is done that solution does nothing to solve the current $51 million that’s wasted each year on the unoccupied space.  There’s no reason why the government should not act like any normal landlord and rent out unused space.  But again, what incentive does the government have to act rationally when it faces no negative repercussions for the money that’s lost?

It’s examples like this one that really discredit the tears this Administration and Congress cry over sequestration, which cuts a mere $85 billion from the federal budget.