Peace Garden News

Congress has passed the Thomas R. Carper Water Resources Development Act of 2024, a package that includes several bills aimed at optimizing the federal government's real estate portfolio. Among these is the bipartisan FASTA Reform Act, introduced by U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer. Cramer, who serves as the Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure, has been actively involved in overseeing federal buildings across the nation.

During a hearing in July with the EPW, Cramer questioned Elliot Doomes, Commissioner of the General Services Administration’s Public Buildings Service (PBS), about efforts to improve the use of federal buildings. A Government Accountability Office study from October 2023 highlighted that 17 out of 24 surveyed federal agencies were using only an estimated 25 percent or less of their headquarters' capacity. In 2023 alone, over 5,000 federal buildings were reported as underutilized or unutilized.

The FASTA Reform Act is part of efforts included in the Thomas R. Carper Water Resources Development Act to help consolidate federal real estate and prevent taxpayer-funded buildings from remaining empty. The Federal Assets Sale and Transfer Act (FASTA), originally passed in 2019, was designed to facilitate offloading unused federal assets. Since its enactment, it has resulted in disposing of ten buildings and generating $193 million in revenue. The reform act aims to streamline this process further for better sales and returns for taxpayers.

Additionally, the Utilizing Space Efficiency and Improving Technologies (USE IT) Act mandates that the GSA and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) adopt a standard methodology for measuring building occupancy and utilization. It also requires actions to reduce or consolidate space if utilization rates fall below 60%.

Senator Cramer remarked on this development: “Well, we all know that Washington bureaucrats love working in their pajamas all the while real workers are out there paying the bill through their hard-earned tax dollars that the government takes so freely,” he said. “We know that FASTA is already working, and this reform will actually help it work even better, saving taxpayers many millions as the government offloads these unused office spaces.”