Norton Signs on to Civilian Property Realignment Act after Environmental and Homelessness Concerns were Addressed

WASHINGTON, DC – After negotiating an amendment addressing her environmental and homelessness concerns, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) testified in support of the Civilian Property Realignment Act, H.R. 1734, at the House Rules Committee hearing today. The President was the first to propose such a bill in his budget last year. Norton, the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management, and subcommittee Chairman Jeff Denham (R-CA) have spent the past several months negotiating the terms of the bill, which was reported out of the Rules Committee today. The bill, patterned after the Department of Defense Base Realignment Commission (BRAC) law, will allow the federal government to make the highest and best use of surplus and underused properties under the jurisdiction of various federal agencies, and to dispose of properties the government does not need to help with debt reduction. The bill also is expected to improve property management by allowing the General Services Administration to consolidate or co-locate agencies in existing federal space.

Norton declined to support the bill until she obtained an agreement on two provisions. The original bill completely waived Title V of the McKinney-Vento Act, which provides for the free transfer of surplus federal properties to homeless providers, as well as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Norton said that the waivers were unprecedented and unnecessary. Homeless providers have claimed less than 1 percent of the thousands of properties available to them because of the size of the properties. After seeking information from experts and homeless providers on the pattern of homeless-provider claims of property, Norton negotiated a provision that applied the McKinney-Vento requirements to properties of a certain size and value.

Norton insisted on the removal of the waiver of NEPA, which requires a thorough public examination of the environmental impacts of a project or property transfer, to avoid an unintended adverse effect on a surrounding community and a harmful precedent of waiving appropriate environmental review on major infrastructure projects.

Published: February 3, 2011