Congress is fond of ignoring current issues and pushing the problems onto future taxpayers. The philosophy is already causing issues at federal buildings, where backlogged repairs have piled up and will now cost an estimated $370 billion as of 2024, according to the Government Accountability Office.
It’s an increase of $87 billion compared to the $283 billion estimate from 2023.
The cost of deferred maintenance skyrocketed in the last few years, as the 277,000 buildings owned by the federal government needed an estimated $171 billion of repairs in 2017.
There is no easy solution. The government spent $10.3 billion on building repairs in 2023, meaning officials would need to allocate an extra 36 years’ worth of repairs budget to resolve all the backlogged issues — a tall task as Congress looks to cut spending.
But ignoring the problem is also unwise. The GAO explained “Unless this trend reverses, federal assets will continue to deteriorate and need premature replacement, which can be significantly more expensive than the cost of repairs had they not been delayed.”
The Department of Defense is responsible for almost three quarters of the deferred maintenance ($271 billion). Some military barracks are at risk of sewage overflow and have fire safety systems that do not function, according to the GAO.
The remaining $99 billion is spread among several federal agencies, but four of them — the General Services Administration and the Departments of Health and Human Services, Interior, and Energy — have not given Congress “sufficient information” about how the backlogged repairs affect day-to-day work, the GAO said.
The federal government also pays for security at many of its buildings, but some of the guards seemingly do not pass muster.
As a test, GAO employees attempted to sneak prohibited items into 27 federal buildings. They succeeded “about half the time.”
To make matters worse, these buildings aren’t even being used: only 6% of government workers are in the office full time, with the majority continuing to work from home long after the pandemic. Many federal buildings are almost completely empty — buildings in D.C. are 12% occupied, on average, Open the Books found.
It’s a clear sign the government has gotten too large when it has acquired more property than it can afford to occupy or maintain.
(The #WasteOfTheDay is from the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.)
This article was originally published by RCI and made available via RealClearWire.
