MASTER PLANNING

Mr. BENJAMIN. Let's go over your general statement first, and then we can get to the supplementals, and I assume the general statement you have submitted does include the Senate items, even though you have not itemized those in your highlights.

Mr. WHITE. Yes, sir.

Mr. BENJAMIN. On August 5, 1978, a long-range plan that sets forth as many as 11 major new House and Senate Office Buildings was described by at least one Senator as ridiculous and outrageous. Allegedly, the Architect responded that the master plan for the U.S. Capitol is being prepared simply to identify the best sites and design concepts for future congressional expansion and none of the plan's proposals have been funded, endorsed or debated by the Congress. The plan supposedly makes no assumptions about actual need for any space beyond the Hart Building, according to the Architect, who stated that no one knows what the future holds, and if the need doesn't exist, the plans can be left on the shelf. In 1975, the Architect testified before this subcommittee that he had been meeting with the National Capital Planning Commission regarding this activity. The 1976 appropriations act provided $350,000 for an outside planning firm to draft the master plan. In 1977, the Architect reported that the planning firms had completed Phase I and that all 3 phases would be completed by August 19, 1977.

However, in August, 1977, Phase II was completed. The final report, according to the Architect's testimony in 1978 would be issued in early 1978. He further requested an additional appropriation of $100,000. Was that appropriation granted?

Mr. WHITE. It was.

Mr. BENJAMIN. So you actually have $450,000 for that plan. Mr. WHITE. That is correct.

Mr. BENJAMIN. On March 1, 1979, more than 18 months after Phase III was to be delivered to the Congress, you indicate that Phase III is scheduled for issuance in 1979. Please advise when it will be issued.

Mr. WHITE. It will be available by this summer; I would say June or July of this year. Part of the reason for the delay, Mr. Chairman, was anticipating the appropriation of those additional funds, and in my testimony last year in requesting those funds I mentioned that that was the reason for the delay.

We are now prepared to proceed and have begun with the final phase.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I believe your original testimony in 1975 was that you only needed $300,000, and $350,000 was subsequently appropri ated. What communications you may have had off the record. I don't know. Then apparently you have indicated $450,000 was needed, and you have all $450,000. However, in 1978, wasn't that the first time you had asked for the additional $100,000?

Mr. WHITE. In 1978; that is correct.

Mr. BENJAMIN. So consequently any delay could not be predicated on the fact of lack of the additional $100,000?

Mr. WHITE. Not all of it; the additional length of time that it took initially was interrelated to the reason for asking for the

additional funds, which was that as we proceeded with the planning process, it became apparent that it was necessary to go more extensively into the collection of data and information than had originally been anticipated, and the judgment on that was——

NEED FOR MASTER PLAN DETAIL

Mr. BENJAMIN. What do you mean by that?

Mr. WHITE. The original concept, for example, with regard to the plan was to go into, let's say, the area of transportation, to a certain depth, and it became apparent that more data was needed in terms of traffic patterns, and traffic flow on the streets and the movement of people onto and off of the Hill in the morning and in the evening; so that the originally budgeted amount of work which would be necessary to achieve the desired results appeared to be inadequate, and it was felt that it was important enough to have credible data, and thus to dig deeper into that kind of information than we had originally anticipated. That took a little more time and some more money.

Time didn't seem to be of the essence, in any case, since we are concerned with long-range planning, and the planning was really instituted to some degree as a result of some discussions that had occurred regarding the need for an additional House office building. The pressures for that seemed to diminish as a result of the acquisition of jurisdiction over the old FBI identification building, now known as House Office Building Annex No. 2, and since the needs had diminished, the time pressures for the preparation of the master plan seemed to diminish as well. So there was no great effort made to try and meet that time limit.

Mr. BENJAMIN. By time pressure I suppose you are saying Congress wasn't putting great pressure on you?

Mr. WHITE. That is correct.

Mr. BENJAMIN. So, as a consequence, it has gone 18 months and $100,000 more than anticipated.

Mr. WHITE. The $100,000 is related to the 18 months only in that the additional funds were spent to get more information. It was not a result of delay, as such, that the costs went up.

Mr. BENJAMIN. How much have you spent on this today, and would you provide an itemization for the record of all expenditures in-house and for outside consultants?

Mr. WHITE. Yes, I will be glad to provide that; and in that regard, I should say, Mr. Chairman, that in accordance with my testimony last year, any additional funds that are necessary to complete this project are available from our contingent expenses and thus no additional requests for appropriations will be made for that purpose.

[The information follows:]

ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL MASTER PLAN FOR FUTURE DEVELOPMENT OF THE

Mr. BENJAMIN. Off the top of your head, how much have you spent in-house?

Mr. Elliott Carroll. The professional consultant fees, which are $388,500 of the $450,000, have been obligated, though not yet totally expended. Those are contracts with consultants. In-house there are about $8,735 worth of miscellaneous expenses such as longdistance calls, and so forth.

Mr. BENJAMIN. How about manpower?

Mr. Elliott Carroll. That is that portion of Mr. White's and my time devoted to the management of the work of the consultants. Mr. BENJAMIN. No other personnel have been assigned to this? Mr. Elliott Carroll. No, sir.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I am wondering about the need of this if you indicate the Congress can shelve it if it is unacceptable.

Mr. WHITE. I am not sure where that quotation came from. Mr. BENJAMIN. The Washington Post.

Mr. WHITE. Then it is probably accurate.

Mr. BENJAMIN. On that date I gave you, August 5, 1978.

Mr. WHITE. I am not sure it is a direct quotation, however. It is probably a translation of a direct quotation.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I can provide the article, but my recollection is it did have quotation marks around it. I won't vouch for the accuracy of the Washington Post.

FUTURE NEEDS ON CAPITOL HILL

Mr. WHITE. They are usually accurate. But in any case let me say that that was in response to a question, and I think it would be appropriate to say that one can presume that some kind of construction is likely to occur for the Congress on Capitol Hill sometime in the future. I think it would be very likely, or the probabilities, let's say, of there being no further construction ever to be made on Capitol Hill are, in my judgment, rather small.

The only basis upon which we have to proceed of course, is an extrapolation of the past curve of growth. Whether that continues or not is another question. If it doesn't, then perhaps a plan is unnecessary, if we could be positive of that.

In the past, as the needs arose and the Congress made a decision to have another building, there was no plan upon which the location of that building could be based, as a result of which, for example, many people feel that the site now occupied by the Lbrary of Congress James Madison Memorial Building, would have been better to preserve for a fourth House office building.

On the other hand, if one takes the position that there will never be another House office building, then it is appropriate to use that site in the way it has been used.

Because we don't know, some kind of plan needs to be evolved which is, of course, capable of change as the needs change, and as the times change, but to proceed without any overall plan, it seems to me would be a circumstance that could result in a lot of detrimental effects.

And the master plan, as I have indicated through discussion of transportation problems, and so on, is not merely concerned with sites for buildings. That is, of course, finally what results, but transportation problems, for example, are intermingled with that. Mr. BENJAMIN. There is no projection of space need or any analysis of space utilization plan in effect. Is that correct?

Mr. WHITE. The Master Plan Phase II Report contains an analysis of present space needs and an analysis of the inadequacy of that in certain instances and how much space would be needed at the present time if an appropriate amount of space per employee were to be provided. There is a projection which is an extrapolation of past growth curves, but because there is always a sensitivity to the growth of the Congress, we, of course, can't predict precisely into the future.

ANNUAL REPORT OF THE ARCHITECT

Mr. BENJAMIN. From 1818 to 1947, the Architect issued reports to the Congress. On January 4, 1979, the Wall Street Journal reported that you had just issued the first extensive report since 1947, a 55-page compilation of arcane information covering the period July 1, 1975, through September 30, 1976. Is that accurate in terms of how current the report is? There is no date on the document.

Mr. WHITE. The document, itself, is prepared as of September 30, 1976.

Mr. BENJAMIN. When was it actually published?

Mr. WHITE. It was actually published about three months ago. Mr. BENJAMIN. Why would we publish a report for fiscal year 1976 at nearly the end of 1978?

Mr. WHITE. I guess the primary reason being because it hadn't been done for a number of years, and none of the people who were doing this had done it before; it took a while to evolve a format and to do editing and to decide how the information should be presented.

Actually, the report for 1977 is now at the printer's, and the report for 1978 will be available within a few months. So it took a while to get the first one.

The whole purpose of this, in my judgment, would be to have such a report available for the information of this Committee prior to this hearing in future years.

COST OF THE REPORT

Mr. BENJAMIN. How much did it cost to publish this report? Mr. WHITE. I can't tell you. It was done by the in-house staff. Mr. BENJAMIN. Would you provide that for the record?

Mr. WHITE. Yes, we will find out from the printer. It was printed at the Government Printing Office.

[The information follows:]

The GPO has advised that the cost of printing 1,000 copies of the Annual Report of the Architect of the Capitol for the period July 1, 1975 through September 30, 1976 amounted to $7,702. No additional cost was incurred since all information was provided as part of our regular in-house management reporting system and compilation was accomplished by regular staff employees.

GAP IN REPORTS

Mr. BENJAMIN. Can you explain why reports weren't issued from 1947 through 1978?

Mr. WHITE. I haven't any idea. Apparently for one reason or another it was decided to abandon them, either because they didn't find them useful, or some other reason. I just can't say why. Mr. BENJAMIN. Is it required by law?

Mr. WHITE. No.

Mr. BENJAMIN. You are required to issue a semi-annual report to the Congress on your expenditures; right?

Mr. WHITE. Yes, but this is more descriptive. That is merely line items of the various amounts expended for various purposes, and this is an additional kind of report.

USEFULNESS OF THE ANNUAL REPORT

Mr. BENJAMIN. Can you describe the usefulness of the report? Mr. WHITE. I think it is useful in several ways. One is to provide a history of what is happening in terms of the physical construction on the Hill year-by-year, and in one location. We maintain, of course, a set of archives on all of these things.

Secondly, it is useful, as a means of determining whether the kinds of activities that are taking place and the quantities that are taking place may cause us to change our management policies, some of which I will discuss with you in the course of your justifications.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Did you get it out of this report?

Mr. WHITE. I think some of it; yes.

Mr. BENJAMIN. The Wall Street Journal said this is just a master compilation of trivia, and you find that is going to assist you in your management decisions?

Mr. WHITE. I am not sure-trivia to one may be important to another. There is a lot of information here which could be considered trivia by somebody not concerned with the details of what is happening on the Hill.

For example, it tells that the Longworth Office Building, in reciting a history-and incidentally because this was the first report having been made in that many years, we thought it would be useful to include in it some historical information covering all the years in between and touching on various items of general interest. It tells, for example, that the Longworth House Office Building contains 251 2-room suites and 16 committee rooms. That is trivia in a sense, and yet it is important in another sense. Mr. BENJAMIN. Give us the cost and what you plan to do with this, and an explanation of why it had not been utilized from 1947 to 1978.

[The information follows:]