Watching the National Science Foundation shuffle in the starting blocks, most of the Northern Virginia real estate community has expressed certainty that, especially in this budget environment, NSF is unlikely to be moving from its present…
Tag: Federal Leases
“Business as Usual is Over”
The table above lists the long term savings submitted by the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on 3/8/12. Savings are calculated as the difference between the maximum rent originally requested by GSA and the maximum rent…
DoD is Evaluating Changes to its Facility Security Standards
In written testimony on March 7th before the House, Dr. Dorothy Robyn, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Installations and Environment, confirmed that DoD has embarked upon a formal initiative to review the Department’s anti-terrorism/force protection (ATFP)…
House Committee (Finally) Approves 11 Prospectuses
The House of Representatives, Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, convened this morning in a mark-up hearing to finally approve 11 prospectuses, nearly all of which have been languishing on the Hill for more than a year. In…
USPS Closing, Consolidating More Facilities
Facing a projected budget deficit of more than $14 billion, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) announced last month (on February 23) that it will slash the size of its mail processing network by almost half. Of…
GSA’s Revised Energy Star Policy
One of GSA’s unique challenges is that it must adapt its leases to accommodate a vast array of laws, executive orders, federal regulations and other agencies’ policies. That’s a hard thing to do and it’s made…
Authorization and Appropriation – What’s the Difference?
Each year, the House and Senate authorize each federal agency, department, or program to spend a specific amount of money, and the President signs the bill into law. But this money may not be spent until…
Spotlight: NNSA
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)—a semi-autonomous agency within the U. S. Department of Energy (DoE)—is responsible for the management and security of the nation’s nuclear weapons, nuclear nonproliferation and naval reactor programs—serious work, indeed. Its…
GovSpeak: “Continuing Resolution”
What happens when Congress fails to pass a formal federal appropriations bill, and/or the President fails to sign it into law by October 1st? (We ask “when” rather than “if” because this has happened every year…
Understanding the Federal Budget Process
Surprisingly, the U.S. Constitution makes no provisions for a federal budget and, in fact, the federal government operated without a comprehensive budget process until 1921. The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, which has been amended…