House Offers Counterpart to Senate Disposal Legislation

The scrutiny of surplus federal real property is not only bi-partisan, it is bi-cameral. On July 16, 2007 Representative John Duncan (R-TN) introduced H.R. 3049, to establish a pilot program for the expedited disposal of Federal real property. The proposed legislation was referred to the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform.

Duncan’s proposal to the House of Representatives was essentially identical to The Federal Real Property Disposal Pilot Program (S.1667) introduced in the Senate by Tom Carper (D-DE) on behalf of himself and Tom Coburn (R-OK) on June 20, 2007.

Under the terms of both sets of proposed five-year legislation, The Director of the OMB will oversee the development of a program to dispose of real property that does not meet the needs of the government. The director will be responsible for coming up with criteria for property that does not meet those needs.

Candidate properties eligible for disposal in the program will be recommended to the Director by the Agencies.

Sale price of real property under the pilot program must be not less than the fair market value, and costs associated with disposal may not exceed the fair market value of the property without approval of the Director.

To expedite the disposal of property, the proposed legislation allows agencies to sidestep section 501 of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 11411), or any other law regarding the no-cost conveyance of real property owned by the Federal Government.

To compensate agencies participating in this program, the legislation recommends that administrative expenses related to disposal be returned to the affected agency. After payment of those administrative expenses, 80 percent of sale proceeds are to be deposited into the Treasury. Twenty percent will be returned to the affected agency. After the conclusion of the five-year pilot program, any unobligated amounts are to be transferred to the general fund of the Treasury.

Duncan’s proposed legislation is consistent with the Tennessee representative’s opinion of the problems associated with federal ownership of real property assets – particularly land. Duncan is widely known for attributing maintenance backlogs in public assets on excessive ownership of land assets by government.

In a March 6 speech on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Duncan noted, “the Federal Government owns over 30 percent of the land in this country. State and local governments and quasi-governmental agencies are controlling the other 20 percent. Half the land, 50 percent, is in some type of government or public ownership or control.

“Government at all levels keeps taking over more and more property at a faster rate than ever before,” Duncan continued.

“We are constantly being told we have a mega-billion-dollar maintenance backlog for the national parks and all these other public areas; yet we keep taking over more land.

“You really can never satisfy government's appetite for money or land,” he added.

For the full text of the proposed House pilot legislation, see http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-3049

For the full text of the proposed Senate pilot legislation, see http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:S.1667: