Several years of budgetary restrictions imposed by Congress on the GSA are starting to take a toll on upkeep of federal buildings, acting administrator Denise Turner Roth told a House subcommittee recently.
She said the agency’s major repairs and alterations line item “has borne a disproportionate share of cuts over the last five fiscal years. This makes little fiscal sense because the backlog of repair needs continues to grow while the costs, scope, and urgency of these repairs only increases over time.”
She cited, for example, the need to make basic utility upgrades at the Goodfellow Federal Center in St. Louis, originally estimated at $37 million and now estimated at $44 million. And the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customhouse in New York has a pressing need to stop water damage and upgrade its exterior.
Similarly, she noted a request for $12.3 million to upgrade outdated systems in the Sixth Street Federal Building in Los Angeles, saying that “if we do not receive funding, GSA will simply have to come back again in a future fiscal year at greater expense to taxpayers, and with potentially bigger problems that need to be fixed.”
