Collins: Government underuses property

WASHINGTON – The General Accounting Office reported in August that the federal government owns hundreds of properties, including four sites in Maine, that are vacant or underutilized.

“Such properties are costly to maintain” and “could be put to more cost-beneficial uses,” U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said during a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearing she chaired on Wednesday.

Across the country, according to the GAO report, the federal government owns 927 properties containing more than 2,000 acres and 32.1 million square feet of vacant or underused space.

Though this represents only a small portion of the more than 3 billion square feet of building space, worth about $328 billion, that the government owns, Collins said “the federal government spends millions of dollars each year to maintain empty buildings. This is government waste, plain and simple.”

Included in the GAO report are 51 acres in Scarborough and 1 acre in Eastport that are vacant. The report also said that more than half the 55,000 square feet of “administrative space” at the Veterans Affairs Medical and Regional Office Center in Togus is vacant and that more than 6,000 square feet of living quarters at the facility are unoccupied.

But Jack Sims, director of the Togus center, said the figures are a year old and do not represent the current situation.

The living quarters are indeed vacant, he said during a telephone interview Thursday, but that is because the occupants were required to leave while the center removes lead paint for which it was fined this summer. Sims said that once that problem is taken care of the facilities will be occupied again.

As for the large amount of vacant office space, Sims said, that has been an “ongoing concern” and the center is working to convert some of it into clinical space.

According to Andrea Hofelich, spokeswoman for the Governmental Affairs Committee, the U.S. Postal Service purchased the 51 acres in Scarborough for development of a new Portland-southern Maine processing and distribution center. It also bought the 1 acre site in Eastport to expand the main post office there.

The fourth Maine property on the GAO list is the Agriculture Department’s animal and plant inspection site in Houlton, where, according to the report, 37 percent of the space was vacant.

Anne Hilleary, a senior analyst for the GAO, acknowledged that use of properties on the list might have increased and the report’s figures might be outdated by now.

“Given the uniqueness of these cases of vacant and underutilized properties, it is really hard to make sweeping generalizations about the plans agencies may or may not have,” she said.

Nevertheless, Collins said the report, which she requested along with fellow Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, and others, indicates a nationwide problem.

Collins cited an abandoned federally owned hospital she recently visited in Washington, D.C. She said the facility is rotted, water-damaged, moldy and full of furniture that was left behind.

“This waste costs the federal government, which sees no return on its substantial investments,” she said. “It costs local communities, which could put such properties to better use. And it costs taxpayers, who must ultimately foot the bill.”