CQ Homeland Security | Lawmakers Have Mixed Views Moving Coast Guard Headquarters

Lawmakers Have Mixed Views Moving Coast Guard Headquarters
By Jennifer Scholtes | CQ Homeland Security | May 28, 2012

Members of the House Transportation Committee have long complained that they don’t get the time of day from the Department of Homeland Security, so a top Republican on the panel is seeking a creative bypass of that communication barrier this summer.

Like many legislators with a stake in the department’s budget, Rep. Frank A. LoBiondo, R-N.J., believes the Obama Administration’s fiscal 2013 request for the Coast Guard is detrimentally slim in key areas. The Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee chairman wants to ask Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano one thing: How can she justify spending nearly $25 million to move Coast Guard headquarters personnel to the St. Elizabeths compound by itself next year while other portions of the agency’s budget are being trimmed.

“If the secretary of homeland security was so hell-bent on moving them out there, she should have made sure that this operational and readiness and acquisition budget wasn’t cut,” LoBiondo said this month. “She had to sign off on this, and that’s what’s wrong.”

The relationship between members of the committee and DHS officials has for years been a tense one, as the panel has tried to assert authority over the department it has little jurisdictional claim to. So knowing he is unlikely to get answers from Napolitano on the rationale for her funding breakdown, LoBiondo is hoping to leverage the friendship of a lawmaker better positioned — House Homeland Security Chairman Peter T. King, R-N.Y.

“The Department of Homeland Security, because of our jurisdiction, really doesn’t respond to us; they feel that they don’t need to respond to us,” LoBiondo said. “If I have my way, we’re going to hear a lot more about this through the Homeland Security Committee.”

King has made no promises that he’ll act as a surrogate in LoBiondo’s mission, but the chairman said last week that he’s always happy to talk things over with his New Jersey colleague.

Expanding Timeline

Although LoBiondo has not gotten the face time he wants with Napolitano, Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Robert J. Papp has explained to the subcommittee chairman the way the funding request played out this year. It was Papp himself, in fact, who pushed for the additional money to move the agency to the headquarters site where all of the department’s components are expected to eventually be located, the commandant told LoBiondo during a hearing in March.

“My budget was completed, and then we went back to [Napolitano] and asked her for the money above and beyond what we ended up with for this, about $25 million to pay for additional costs at St. Elizabeths,” Papp said. “And she added that back into our budget.”

The construction timeline for the headquarters project has been pushed further back each of the last few years as budget constraints have resulted in insufficient appropriations for renovation and new construction on the grounds of the former St. Elizabeths mental health hospital complex in Anacostia. Throughout the delays, the project’s estimated total has risen from $3.4 billion to just over $4 billion.

Many on Capitol Hill worry that withholding funding for the project in the short term will only continue to inflate the overall cost.

Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said moving forward with the Coast Guard’s transition to the new headquarters is the most cost efficient choice.

“If you take it out of construction, I’m sure the General Services Administration and other people who are involved in the construction would be concerned,” Thompson said. “We should go forward with it. I wouldn’t try to scapegoat the Coast Guard as a method of putting the whole consolidation of the headquarters at St. E’s at risk.”

Divvying Appropriations

Appropriators in both the House and the Senate have signed off on funding for the Coast Guard’s relocation. The measure (S 3216) Senate lawmakers have approved in committee would provide the $89 million Obama requested for overall headquarters and mission support consolidation, while the House bill (HR 5855) would provide $10 million to ensure the Coast Guard will be able to move in 2013 and that there will be no obstacles to accessing the site.

In its funding report, the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee stated that the panel “recognizes that delays in this project have already led to significant cost and schedule changes to the original plan.”

Subcommittee chairman Rep. Robert B. Aderholt, R-Ala., said he visited the St. Elizabeths complex this spring and was impressed with the progress being made with construction.

The chairman would like to fund additional phases this year, but there’s just not enough money, he said.

“Originally, we were hoping more could move out there, and that’s still the plan,” Aderholt said. “The problem is with budget constraints right now, additional moves are just sort of on hold, or additional expansions are on hold until we can find money to try to move. But especially with the money that’s been invested so far, to turn back now would not be pretty.”

The headquarters building the Coast Guard will move into is a newly constructed high-rise, while the majority of the department’s other agencies will be housed in historic buildings that are undergoing renovation. Aderholt said it’s been his impression that Coast Guard officials are excited to make the move and that the agency is mostly content with the funding levels appropriators have penned so far this year.

“It’s not some kind of hole somewhere; quite honestly, I was shocked at how beautiful that site is,” Aderholt said. “And the commandant called me, as a matter of fact, just a day or so after our markup in the subcommittee and was very thankful and very appreciative of the work we’d done for the Coast Guard. There’s always more that could be funded, but right now the immediate needs of the Coast Guard have been addressed.”