House Panel Demands Answers On DOGE, GSA Real Estate 'Chaos'

A congressional subcommittee had a lot of questions but didn’t receive many answers at a hearing Wednesday afternoon about the federal government’s real estate portfolio.

The hearing, held by the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee that oversees public buildings, came amid sweeping actions the administration is taking to slash the federal footprint. 

And the one official lawmakers wanted to question — the General Services Administration's newly appointed Public Buildings Service commissioner, Michael Peters — wasn’t there. 

“I don't understand,” ranking committee member Rep. Greg Stanton, a Democrat from Arizona, said after commenting that Peters had accepted his invitation a few weeks earlier before “changing his mind.”

“We need to provide oversight over this process. Commissioner Peters has a responsibility to be here to explain this process to Congress so we can provide our appropriate oversight duties,” he said. 

The General Services Administration didn't respond to Bisnow's request for comment on the hearing. 

Lawmakers did have two officials involved with the federal government’s real estate decisions to question: David Marroni, the director of physical infrastructure for the Government Accountability Office, and David Winstead, a member of the Public Buildings Reform Board, which Congress created in 2016 to advise on shrinking the federal portfolio. Winstead served as PBS commissioner from 2005 to 2008.

Lawmakers were eager to hear about the rationale behind — and the plan for — the properties the GSA revealed to be slated for disposition or lease cancellation and why the GSA hasn’t communicated its moves or strategy to them. 

“People are confused about GSA activities, and Congress has little visibility into what exactly GSA is doing, and I don't know if GSA knows what it is doing,” said Rep. Rick Larsen, a Democrat from Washington. 

“My own staff is largely getting news of GSA activities from the press, from a Reddit thread titled GSA RIF Megathread — you'll never hear me say that again — and occasionally from ex-GSA employees,” he added.

The GSA on Tuesday afternoon released a list of 443 properties it said it was considering for disposition. The buildings included the GSA’s own headquarters as well as some of the major headquarters buildings in D.C., including the homes of the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Justice, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the FBI and the Department of Labor.

That list has since been taken down. A GSA spokesperson said Wednesday afternoon it will republish it “in the near future” after determining how best to relay the nuances of the offered assets. 

Meanwhile, the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency has been adding millions of square feet to its online database of lease cancellations over the past few weeks. The tally, which was first posted on Feb. 18, now lists 748 terminated leases totaling 9.6M SF, or 5.4% of the GSA’s leased portfolio, according to JLL’s tracker.

Lawmakers said the way the GSA and DOGE are proceeding is creating “chaos” and “mass confusion” in the real estate market for agencies, lawmakers and the public — and they are getting no answers on why some properties that they deem essential are suddenly being targeted in what they see as a haphazard manner. 

Rep. Nellie Pou, a Democrat from New Jersey, expressed concern that her state’s Robert A. Roe Federal Building in Paterson, which she called a “critical resource for the community” and which was awarded $5.8M in Inflation Reduction Act funds in October, was on the disposition list.

“The proposed sale of the Roe Building strikes me as totally nonsensical, and I will vigorously, as you can see, will indeed oppose this,” she said before asking Winstead to explain the decision. 

She and other lawmakers voiced frustration that they were left with few answers after receiving no communication from the GSA.  

“We get absolutely no notification and information,” Pou said.

Rep. Rob Bresnahan, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said that it was with “extreme frustration” that he learned from the press about three “non-core” buildings in his district that were on the GSA’s disposition list. 

“When was the member of Congress going to be notified that there could be implications to facilities inside of his district?” he asked.

Winstead told members that the GSA was listening in and would be in touch. 

“GSA,” Rep. Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Tennessee, said at one point, addressing the camera, “my name is Steve Cohen, C-O-H-E-N. I'm on the third floor of the Odell Horton building.”

He proceeded to implore the agency not to dispose of the property in his district where his office is located — which he had learned was on its disposition list.

The hearing revealed gaps in the conversations occurring between the GSA, DOGE, PBRB and GAO. 

GAO's Marroni said he doesn't know how PBS’ Peters would have known that the GSA could reduce its portfolio by 50% — as Peters said at a PBRB meeting last month, just days into his position — without doing a utilization analysis. 

“We have not done that analysis,” Marroni said.

At one point, a representative asked Winstead if the buildings he had mentioned the PBRB was considering for its latest slate of dispositions were on the GSA’s 443-property list released Tuesday. 

Winstead said he “assumed” that they were. The representative clarified that he had checked, and they indeed were.

Subcommittee members said they had laid out a clear path for the GSA to follow to offload property.

In January, President Joe Biden signed the USE IT Act, which directs the GSA to work with agencies to assess the utilization of federal office buildings. If the buildings are determined to be less than 60% used, it orders that the GSA take steps to reduce and consolidate space.

“Congress gave GSA Steps 1 through 5, but GSA is skipping from Step 1 directly to Step 5,” Larsen said. “That is causing confusion and chaos in the federal real estate market.” 

“There is a logical and orderly way to do this, but the Trump administration clearly has no intention of following the word of directive,” Stanton said. “Instead, there has been mass confusion.” 

Marroni and Winstead did give some updates on how the entities they work for are involved with the federal footprint decisions. 

Winstead said the PBRB is assessing around 50 assets for its next round of dispositions, which would save $18B over 30 years. It is looking at properties in D.C., Miami, Los Angeles, Austin and Atlanta, and it is doing outreach to those communities now. 

He mentioned Los Angeles’ 561K SF Wilshire Federal Building, which houses the FBI and passport office, as an example of a property that may be on that list.

In Southwest D.C., an area that the PBRB has pinpointed as a focus for its next round of dispositions, Winstead said it is “working closely with players in the District” on logistics like what the timing would look like for bringing the selected properties to market.

The PBRB has already recommended asset disposals totaling $775M and is slated to deliver two more lists of recommendations by the end of 2026. 

Marroni and Winstead said there are issues about how the GSA disposes of buildings — the long and intense process that it needs to go through and the fact that the properties are typically offered up for public auction via a website.

“In reality, a public auction process is not monitored by the highest real estate interest and REITs and other investors in the country,” Winstead said. “They just don't look at a public auction site.” 

Marroni said that with the USE IT Act’s timeline, the GSA and agencies would have the data they need by the summer to determine how they should approach shrinking the portfolio. 

He said that as the administration “rapidly” moves forward with its lease terminations and disposals, he hopes the GSA and agencies do so in a thoughtful and steady manner. 

Marroni also said the administration needs to consider which reductions to prioritize and the funding that will be needed to move and consolidate.

“Rightsizing the federal government's real property holdings is long overdue,” he said. “As GSA and other agencies move forward with reductions, they should do so deliberately and in a strategic way that balances speed and thoughtful analysis of planning.”