Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs April 10, 2020 The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly Chairman, Subcommittee on Government Operations U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform Washington, DC 20515 The Honorable Jamie Raskin Chairman, Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform Washington, DC 20515 The Honorable Eleanor Holmes Norton Member, U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 The Honorable Jennifer Wexton Member, U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515 Dear Chairmen Connolly and Raskin and Representatives Norton and Wexton: Thank you for your letter to Administrator Emily Murphy dated April 1, 2020 regarding the operational control of certain U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) owned, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) occupied spaces. The Administrator has asked me to respond. I write to clarify and correct inaccurate claims included in your letter and to assure the Committee that GSA is complying with all laws and regulations with regard to any interactions with OPM. Since its inception in 1949, GSA has been tasked under the Property Act with the stewardship of public buildings in the United States. In its role as the Federal government’s landlord, GSA manages a portfolio of nearly 370 million square feet of owned and leased space across the country. Per GSA’s statutory mandate, public buildings “are under the exclusive jurisdiction and control, and in the custody of, the Administrator” of GSA. 1 In executing that mandate, GSA can, at its sole discretion, delegate responsibility for operating and maintaining a public building to a tenant agency. Such agreements can also be revoked by GSA at its sole discretion. 1 40 U.S.C. §3301. 1800 F Street, NW Washington, DC 20405-0002 www.gsa.gov 2 With respect to the facilities referenced in your letter, GSA is and has been the owner of the Federal Executive Institute complex (FEI) in Charlottesville, Virginia and the Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building (TRB) in Washington, DC. In both cases, GSA had in the past elected to delegate operational control of the facilities to OPM. Last year, at the request of the then-OPM Acting Director Margaret Weichert, GSA undertook the process to rescind both delegations. As a result, on July 29, 2019, GSA provided formal notice to OPM of its intent to rescind the delegation for both TRB and FEI with an effective date of October 1, 2020. Since the rescission letters were issued last July, GSA, at the request of OPM, reconsidered the operation and maintenance of the FEI complex, and both agencies are working together on a new delegation agreement. Because the FEI complex includes a residential executive training center, its operational needs include hospitality services. After reviewing options for including the hospitality services in GSA’s operations and maintenance contracts, GSA and OPM agreed to redelegate FEI to OPM. Moreover, OPM is the sole tenant at the facility, which is also a positive factor in GSA’s consideration of requests for delegation. In a similar fashion to FEI, on March 11, 2020 OPM asked GSA to redelegate TRB to OPM. However, TRB poses two challenges not present at FEI. First, with the congressionally mandated transfer of the National Background Investigations Bureau to the Department of Defense effective October 1, 2019, TRB has now become a multi-tenant building. While there are a few exceptions, GSA does not typically delegate operational responsibility to any tenant in a multi-tenant building. Second, GSA believes that the TRB is underutilized by OPM and that there is an opportunity for consolidation by OPM within the building freeing up space for other federal tenants. If the space utilization at TRB were improved, OPM could potentially save more than $5 million annually in rent payable to GSA. GSA understands the value in this consolidation process and earlier this year consolidated its National Capital Regional Office into GSA’s Headquarters building at 1800 F Street, NW. This move will save GSA $3 million per year in rent expenses and allow it to backfill another Federal agency into Federally owned space, from leased space. Currently, GSA is evaluating OPM’s request and conducting a housing study of TRB to identify opportunities to consolidate OPM space as they continue to meet mission objectives. That study began on October 19, 2019, and was scheduled to conclude on March 31, 2020, but has been extended until September 30, 2020. Additionally, it is worth noting that while certain Chief Financial Officer Act (CFO Act) agencies do have GSA delegations to directly operate their headquarters, not all do, with the Department of Veterans Affairs as the largest exception. In the interests of accuracy, I believe it is also important to address an incorrect understanding that terminating the delegation would increase OPM’s cost by $2 million per year. In fact, the current version of the draft Occupancy Agreements for OPM project a cost virtually equal to OPM’s current operating costs and rent. The rental payment to GSA would increase because Operations and Maintenance costs would now be included in the rent. OPM would accrue a corresponding savings as it would no longer be responsible for operating costs at the building. 3 There is one other factor that also bears discussion with respect to OPM’s rental payment. In May 2020, OPM’s shell rent for TRB will increase by $1.3 million annually. This increase is irrespective of whether or not the building is delegated and is the result of GSA’s nationwide policy that reappraises the baseline rent for each of its buildings every ten years. Finally, in the letter you specifically allege that GSA has “continued to take actions prohibited by statute,” presumably referring to section 1112 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020. 2 This is incorrect. Section 1112 in the relevant part states: No person may assign, transfer, transition, merge, or consolidate any function, responsibility, authority, service, system, or program that is assigned in law to the Office of Personnel Management to or with the General Services Administration, the Office of Management and Budget, or the Executive Office of the President… As I stated above, decisions directly relating to the operations of public buildings, which include both FEI and TRB, are explicitly assigned to GSA in statute. Since no function, responsibility, authority, service, system, or program assigned to OPM in statute is implicated in this situation, no violation of section 1112 has occurred, or will occur should OPM’s TRB delegation end as scheduled on October 1. In the interest of transparency, the Administration has made every effort to be forthright with the Committee regarding actions taken in support of a realignment of OPM’s functions. For its part, GSA has taken no actions violating section 1112 of the NDAA toward realigning functions from OPM to GSA. GSA is committed to notifying the Committee of any actions to effectuate the merger before they happen and after they are completed, as it and others did with the transfer of the Chief Human Capital Officers Council staff to GSA in October 2019. Sincerely, Jeffrey A. Post Associate Administrator 2 P.L. 116-92.