76-16-B7

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Government Cost

Transcript Over in Tulsa, Oklahoma the Corps of Army Engineers if moving about one fifth of its operation out of its present quarters and into a new office building at roughly four times the rent now being paid. The engineers are leaving almost 21,000 square feet of office space, for which they pay $2,89 a square foot, to move into only 16,000 square feet for which they'll pay (make that we'll pay) $11.88 a square foot. The operation that is moving represents about 22 per cent of the Corps' Tulsa headquarters. The other four-fifths of their offices are located in the old Federal Building which has 75,000 square feet of vacant space and which was remodeled 10 years ago at a cost of $700,000 for use by the Engineers. Apparently, none of this is the doing of the Engineers. The Business Service Center of the General Services Administration is in charge of this move. According to the chief of G.S.A. the new more costly office building is the only building in Tulsa which meets "Standard 101 of the National Fire Protection Code" called "Code for Life Safety from Fire in Buildings and Structures". He says the government is really getting tough about the fire regulations. Standard 101 is a book with 16 chapters. The City Fire Marshall of Tulsa says he doubts that any building in Tulsa can meet all of the requirements of Standard 101. The Fire Marshall isn't saying downtown Tulsa is a fire trap -- he's indicating Standard 101 like so many government documents goes beyond the bounds of common sense and reason. To their credit the Corps of Engineers had asked for other locations but were turned down by G.S.A. A lot of questions come to mind in this whole thing -- beginning with why the one-fifth of the Engineers Operation isn't over in the Federal Building with the other four-fifths where there is vacant space amounting to more than four-and-a-half times as much space as they are moving into. If the Federal Building doesn't meet the rigorous requirements for fire safety laid down in Standard 101, why haven't the rest of the engineers been moved out? A spokesman for the Corps can only say it will be up to G.S.A. to say when the building is no longer suitable for use by federal employees. That answers another question. Standard 101 isn't a code that can be enforced on buildings in general. It's just a code for the protection of federal government employees. Taxpayers can work and earn in less protected quarters. And, just between us, I'm sure with every bit as much safety as government employees are provided. According to the Tulsa TRIBUNE the shortcomings of the building the Engineers are leaving consist of the following: One stairway is four inches too narrow and there was some concern expressed about the distance to the rest rooms. Don't feel guilty if you can't make sense out of what they're doing. Let me read a paragraph from a memo on another subject, zero budgeting, by the "Office of Management and Budget". When you can understand this paragraph everything will be clear to you. -- QUOTE -- "Agencies may use whatever review and ranking technique appropriate to their needs. However, the minimum level for a decision unit is always ranked higher than any increment for the same unit, since it represents the level below which activities can no longer be conducted effectively. However, the minimum level package for a given decision unit may be ranked so low in comparison to incremental levels of the decision units that the funding level for the agency may exclude that minimum funding level package" -- UNQUOTE. See! This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.		Details Batch Number 76-16-B7 Production Date 07/06/1977 Book/Page RPtV-178 Audio Youtube? No
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