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GSA Tallies $26B Repair Backlog on Federally Owned Office Buildings
As the Trump administration moves to sell off federal office buildings, the General Services Administration (GSA) has tallied nearly $26 billion in maintenance needs, Bloomberg News reported. The backlog includes 62 buildings that require repairs costing $100 million or more.
Efforts to chip away at the list of repairs are being held up by rules that require congressional signoff on some of the work. GSA chief Ed Forst told Bloomberg. Congress must authorize any repair project costing about $4 million or more, a limit known as the prospectus threshold. Yet legislators have often acted slowly on the approvals and diverted funds meant for such renovations.
The results, Forst said, are often stopgap solutions and inefficient use of space, which, in turn, have hamstrung the administration’s efforts to consolidate the government’s real estate footprint and sell off unneeded buildings. “We don’t allocate the way you should,” Forst told Bloomberg. “We allocate the way we can under the prospectus.”
Pictured: The Herbert C. Hoover Building in Washington, DC, which requires $1.3 billion in repairs, according to GSA. Photo credit: APK.
