I’m a lot happier paying for an empty federal office building than I am paying for one filled with anonymous apparatchiks wrecking the country. We need many more empty federal office buildings.
via based-politics:
The pandemic changed how people work, with remote work becoming wildly more prominent. And the federal government was no exception. But now, post-pandemic, taxpayers are on the hook for billions to fund federal offices that are sitting mostly empty, a new report reveals.
Earlier this month the Government Accountability Office published a report examining the utilization of current federal workspaces, as John Kartch explains for Americans for Tax Reform, and its results were remarkable.
As Kartch notes, the report found that all 24 federal agencies’ headquarters are “vastly underutilized” with most headquarters under 25% capacity and several below 10% capacity.
That’s right: Many federal offices are 75% or even 90% empty. These include the Department of Agriculture, Department of Education, Department of Transportation, Small Business Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and more cabinet-level agencies.
I’ve seen this firsthand. I remember when I still lived in the DC area, I lived near the US Patent & Trade Office. I’d walk my dog by the pristine, sparkling building every day, and for years after the pandemic, it was always almost entirely empty. Its state-of-the-art gym remained closed and the security guards posted seemingly had nothing to do. It always struck me as a remarkable waste.
h/t Ed Driscoll
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