As RCR reported last week, the General Services Administration is giving the Federal Communications Commission the boot. Time to move out of the downtown offices and out to the Portals. By fall. Leases have been canceled. The $17.6 million loaned to the FCC to help pay for the move to the Portals has been taken back. GSA’s reasoning? No move, no money.
GSA is playing hardball. Why? Because the government said it cannot, in good conscience, continue to pay millions of dollars on a lease that is not being used.
“The government has been obligated to pay rent for an unoccupied building, as well as for the FCC’s existing location,” said GSA Administrator David Barram. “As stewards of the public’s trust, we cannot allow this situation to continue and must move forward with the FCC’s relocation without further delay.”
Now we know the point at which good conscience kicks in. $14 million. That is the amount of money taxpayers will have paid for this unoccupied space at the Portals by July. Didn’t GSA feel the need to force this move at $10 million? Or $1 million?
Of course, the saga isn’t over. GSA has said it will pay to consolidate the FCC’s move to the Portals, but it is going to cost more than $17.6 million. If-and with the Portals there always seems to be an “if”-the FCC actually does move, Congress is going to have to come up with some more money.
The $14 million question is whether the commission is going to want to re-think all of its local number portability deadlines. Wireline carriers must offer LNP by Oct. 1, but the FCC’s move won’t be finished until February.
… CTIA and the Center for the Study of Wireless Electromagnetic Compatibility at the University of Oklahoma are hosting a free seminar on managing electromagnetic compatibility in hospitals on June 26 at the Boston Marriott Copely Place in Boston. Interested people can call CTIA’s Julie Plocki at (202) 785-0081.
