Waste of the Day: Throwback Thursday: GSA Seeks Unnecessary, Vacant Buildings

In 1976, the General Services Administration spent $1.5 million – $8.1 million in 2023 dollars – to try to renovate an old train station in Nashville, Tennessee that it didn’t need.

For this wasteful spending, Sen. William Proxmire, a Democrat from Wisconsin, gave the GSA a Golden Fleece Award in 1983. He gave awards to wasteful and nonsensical spending, eventually handing out 168 Golden Fleece Awards between 1975 and 1988.

Congress passed the Public Buildings Cooperative Use Act in 1976, authorizing GSA “to acquire and utilize space in suitable buildings of historic, architectural or cultural significance, unless use of such space would not prove feasible and prudent compared with available alternatives.”

GSA took this to mean they should acquire buildings – even if they have no need for the space at the moment. The GSA administrator ordered his staff to begin aggressively scooping up these buildings, acquiring them before GSA knew whether the space would be needed, Proxmire said.

“By now, GSA’s bureaucrats had to find and renovate a historic building. When a railroad offered to donate a dilapidated, historic railroad station in Nashville, it appeared their prayers had been answered,” Proxmire wrote.

After assessing the building’s condition, the GSA estimated it would cost $14.4 million to renovate the station – but a new building would cost $10.2 million. After re-evaluating, they came up with a new price estimate of $7.2 million.

Pigeons, however, had been roosting in the vacant building, and their dropping created a major health hazard. GSA had to pay $500,00 to pay for the station to be decontaminated — twice.

This is as the General Accounting Office issued a report about the GSA’s planned renovated of the train station, saying, “GSA efforts stemmed from its desire to acquire the train station building, rather that the need for additional space.”

They also found that Congress, in its approval of the renovation budget, “did not have complete and reliable information on several important issues concerning the merits of the proposed renovation.”

Yet, GSA was given the funds to design the project. At the same time, GSA was informed of a nearby old post office building that it was considering attaining.

At the time that Proxmire chided the GSA, the agency still hadn’t decided whether it was going to go forth with the train project or the post office project — neither of which were needed.

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This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.