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GAO-18-603R 1 (2018-07-25)

handle is hein.gao/gaobacpno0001 and id is 1 raw text is: GAO U.S. GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE 441 G St. N.W. Washington, DC 20548 July 25, 2018 The Honorable Peter DeFazio Ranking Member Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure House of Representatives The Honorable Hank Johnson Ranking Member Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure House of Representatives Federal Real Property: GSA Outleasing and Restrictions on Participation of Elected Officials GAO placed federal real property management on its High Risk List in 2003. Yet, 15 years later the federal government continues to face challenges in disposing of excess or underutilized real property that it is unable to repurpose.1 The General Services Administration (GSA) is authorized under certain circumstances to lease unneeded space to private businesses and other nonfederal entities-a process known as outleasing.2 You asked us for information on GSA's outleasing program. This report summarizes: (1) the extent to which GSA has used outleasing to substantially or wholly utilize unneeded federal real property; (2) the process GSA has followed when developing outlease agreements; and (3) the extent to which GSA has included provisions in its outlease agreements related to the participation of elected officials in these outleases. To address our objectives, we obtained GSA data, as of June 2018, on all federal real properties identified by GSA as substantially or wholly outleased-which we defined as outleasing 20 percent or more of a building. We validated these data by reviewing leases, interviewing GSA officials, and visiting one outlease site. We reviewed relevant laws and regulations, copies of the outlease agreements, and older leases on which the current leases were modeled. We also reviewed GSA's Outlease Program Guide, finalized in April 2018. We interviewed officials from GSA's Outlease Program Office, GSA's Office of General Counsel, and GSA regional offices, including those involved with or knowledgeable about the outlease agreements included in our review. We conducted our work from August 2017 to July 2018 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient and appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and 1For this and other reasons, federal real property remains on GAO's High Risk List today. See GAO, High-Risk Series: Progress on Many High-Risk Areas, While Substantial Efforts Needed on Others, GAO-1 7-317 (Washington, D.C., Feb. 15, 2017). 2GSA also uses outleasing to allow for retail and other limited-scope use of available space, such as putting restaurants in the food court of a federal building. GAO-18-603R Federal Real Property Page 1

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